Mali's president is in hiding after a military junta take control of the presidential palace in a rare coup d'etat in the West African nation as it prepared for democratic elections.
A military junta declared it had seized control of Mali, including the presidential palace, yesterday (Thursday) after staging a rare coup d'etat that forced the president of the West African nation into hiding.
The soldiers declared an end to the "incompetent regime" of President Amadou Toumani Toure, closed the country's borders, set up check-points around the capital and suspended its constitution.
Several ministers and senior military officers have been detained and witnesses reported seeing soldiers looting the smouldering presidential palace and nearby shops as sporadic gunfire rang out across the capital, Bamako.
After taking over the state television station on Tuesday, 20 mutineers, dressed in army camouflage, filed into the studio early yesterday to issue a statement asking for all military men to join them and for Mali's citizens to remain calm.
"The National Committee for the Re-establishment of Democracy solemnly swears to return power to a democratically elected president as soon as national unity and territorial integrity are established," said spokesman Lieut Amadou Konare.
Their actions, just weeks away from national polls which were to see Toure make way for an elected successor after two terms in power, drew swift condemnation from around the world. Nigeria's president said the coup was a "setback for democracy in Africa", while Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, voiced his "deep concern" along with the European Union, the African Union and Algeria, Mali's partner in the fight against local branches of al Qaeda.
The US said it "strongly condemns the violence", adding that it "stands by the people of Mali and the legitimately elected government of President Toure."
There was no word from Toure himself, who on Tuesday night said on Twitter that there was no coup, only a mutiny at an army base in Bamako.
Yesterday, conflicting reports surfaced that he had escaped from the palace and was either taking refuge in a foreign embassy or at a military camp. Mali is fighting an insurgency by northern Tuareg separatists, many of whom fought for Col Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and have returned home heavily armed.
The coup leaders are understood to be mainly rank-and-file soldiers who are angry at a perceived failure to give them proper weaponry to keep down the uprising. But according to a report by French radio station RFI, they were quick to take advantage of the chaos yesterday.
"We have seen, in the east of Bamako, men dressed in military uniform systematically emptying small shops," the unnamed reporter said. "Further south, we saw soldiers taking civilian vehicles by force. The anger of the population is growing towards the military 'robbers'."
Others reported seeing soldiers carrying televisions and other goods out of the presidential palace, which was partly in flames yesterday after a battle which is believed to have left several soldiers who were defending the building dead.
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