Mali Crisis: I don’t want bloodshed – President Keita resigns

Mali Crisis: President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has resigned to avoid bloodshed after he was detained in a military coup, whose leaders pledged new elections to resolve a spiralling political crisis in the fragile West African nation.

Keita’s government had been charatcerised by months of protests over economic stagnation, corruption and a brutal Islamist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives.

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 were already gathered in the capital to demand Keita’s resignation, and cheered the rebels as they made their way to the 75-year-old’s official residence.

Keita appeared calm as he appeared in a state television broadcast soon after midnight to declare the dissolution of the government and national assembly, and said he had no choice but to resign with immediate effect.

“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.”

It was unclear whether Keita was still in custody at the Kati base, which was also the site of the 2012 putsch that brought him to power, The Journal reports.