President Ibrahim Keita of Mali said he was resigning early Wednesday to avoid “bloodshed”, hours after his arrest by troops in a sudden coup that followed a months-long political crisis in the fragile West African nation.
Rebel soldiers detained Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Prime Minister Boubou Cisse on Tuesday afternoon and drove the pair to a military base in the town of Kati, near the capital Bamako, which they had seized that morning.
Jubilant crowds in the city centre, gathered to demand Keita’s resignation, had cheered the rebels as they made their way to the 75-year-old’s official residence.
If it pleased certain elements of our military to decide this should end with their intervention, do I really have a choice?” he said of the day’s events. I must submit to it, because I don’t want any bloodshed.
Speaking in a state television broadcast after midnight, he appeared calm as he declared the dissolution of the government and national assembly, and said he had no choice but to resign with immediate effect.
AFP
