Malian government resigns as anger mounts over massacre
Mali's prime minister resigned along with his entire
government on Thursday following criticism over their handling of an upsurge of
violence in the center of the country and a massacre last month that left 160
people dead, AFP reported.
A statement from President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita's office
said he had accepted Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga's resignation and that of his
government two weeks after mass protests erupted over the rising tide of
violence.
Lawmakers from both ruling and opposition parties had
submitted a motion of no confidence against the government on Wednesday,
blaming Maiga and his administration for failing to clamp down on the unrest.
"A prime minister will be named very soon and a new
government will be put in place after consultations with all political
forces" from both the ruling and opposition sides, the statement from
Keita's office said.
The president had on Tuesday said in a televised address
that he had "heard the anger", without explicitly naming the prime
minister.
The government had come under mounting pressure over its
handling of violence in the restive Mopti region and especially a massacre on
March 23 in which 160 people were killed in the village of Ogossagou near the
border with Burkina Faso.
Members of the Dogon ethnic group – a hunting and farming
community with a long history of tensions with the nomadic Fulani people over
access to land – were blamed for the mass killing.
An AFP reporter at the time said many homes in the village
had been burned down and the ground was littered with corpses.
The Fulani have also been accused of supporting a jihadist
preacher, Amadou Koufa, who rose to prominence in central Mali four years ago.
So-called self-defense groups emerged in the Dogon community
with the declared role of providing protection against the insurgents.
But the militia, called the Dan Nan Ambassagou, also used
its powers to attack the Fulani, and was ordered to be dissolved after the
village massacre.
Islamist threat
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Bamako on
April 5 to protest against the upsurge of violence, accusing the government of
not doing enough to stop it.
The protest was called by Muslim religious leaders, organizations
representing the Fulani community, opposition parties and civil society groups.
Mali has been struggling to restore stability since Islamist
extremists linked to Al-Qaeda took control of the country's vast desert north
in early 2012.
While the jihadists were largely driven out in a French-led
military operation that began in January 2013, huge areas are still in the grip
of lawlessness, despite a 2015 peace agreement with some armed groups that
sought to definitively stamp out the Islamist threat.
Since then, militants have shifted from the north towards
the more densely populated center of the country, where they have sharpened
ancient rivalries and ethnic conflicts that date back years.
Jihadist attacks have also spread to Burkina Faso, Chad and
Niger, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes.
March's attack was the deadliest in Mali since the 2013
French-led military intervention.
In the aftermath of the massacre, Keita visited the village
and vowed to beef up security and enforce justice.
