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Mali's isolated junta clamps down to assert control

By Serge Daniel
Mali The shock coup by a group of low-ranking soldiers has prompted swift international condemnation.  By Habibou Kouyate AFPFIle
MAR 24, 2012 LISTEN
The shock coup by a group of low-ranking soldiers has prompted swift international condemnation. By Habibou Kouyate (AFP/FIle)

BAMAKO (AFP) - Mali's putschists, frozen out by the international community, sought to assert their tenuous hold on power on Saturday amid rumours of a loyalist backlash against their two-day old junta.

A prominent member of a leading opposition party was briefly arrested by soldiers at his home early on Saturday after he criticised the coup plotters who seized control of the west African nation early on Thursday morning.

The shock coup by a group of low-ranking soldiers prompted swift international condemnation. The African Union temporarily suspended Mali, Europe froze aid and the United States has threatened to follow suit.

In the capital Bamako, few people ventured outside and there were complaints of cash machines running low on money and petrol shortages as trucks backed up at the borders which have been closed since the coup, an AFP reporter said.

Sporadic looting by soldiers continued.

State television aired re-runs of a statement recorded Friday, denying rumours of the death of their leader, Captain Amadou Sanogo, or that loyalist troops had seized state television.

Early on Saturday morning a group of soldiers arrested Kassoum Tapo, a member of the Democratic Alliance of Mali which has 54 of the 147 seats in parliament who spoke out against the coup on French international radio RFI.

He was released shortly afterwards. However three other Malian politicians, requesting anonymity, said they had gone underground, fearing they were being sought by armed men.

"I am in hiding. They are looking for me. We are not going to let the soldiers arrest everyone and make off with our country," one of them told AFP.

Several political parties planned to create a "refusal front" against the coup leaders.

The soldiers say their takeover was sparked by government's inability to deal with a Tuareg-led insurrection in the north, which has overwhelmed the military who claim they are ill-equipped to fight the desert nomads.

The whereabouts of President Amadou Toumani Toure remain unknown, although his entourage and the coup leaders have said he is safe. A member of his entourage told AFP he was under the protection of his elite paratrooper guards.

The leader of the coup said the appalling circumstances under which soldiers had to defend their territory had sparked the coup.

"When a state is already 50 years old, and unfortunately the armed forces and security operate under minimal conditions to defend its territory, this is a failure," Sanogo said.

Sanogo has said all arrested government officials are "safe and sound" and promised the African Union the safe return of top foreign officials who were stranded in Bamako after the coup.

AU Commission chief Jean Ping spoke to Sanogo on the phone on Friday and was assured the foreign ministers of Kenya and Zimbabwe as well as a Tunisian secretary of state in charge of Arab and African affairs would return safely, an AU source said.

The AU on Friday suspended Mali until the return of a constitutional order and sent a joint delegation with the West African regional bloc ECOWAS.

The coup opened the way for Tuareg rebels to deepen their hold on the north, with their National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) saying it had seized the town of Anefis between the key cities Gao and Kidal.

MNLA spokesman Hama Ag Sid Ahmed said the coup "will worsen the security situation and drag Mali into extricable crises and conflicts," in an interview to the Algerian daily Echorouk.

The Tuareg force has been strengthened by the return of heavily armed fighters who previously fought for Libya's slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Mali is usually seen as politically stable, but unrest in the north, where Tuareg tribes have long felt ignored by a southern government and where Al-Qaeda has also taken root, has created a major security problem.

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