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By BABA AHMED and MARTIN VOGL, Associated Press


      BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Soldiers looted the presidential palace
Thursday of one of the few established democracies in this corner
of Africa, hours after ousting Mali's president just one month
before he was due to step down at the end of his legal term.


      Gunfire could be heard ringing throughout the capital and
soldiers were seen carting televisions and other goods out of the
palace following a coup announcement on state television. President
Amadou Toumani Toure's whereabouts remained unclear.


      The mutinous soldiers imposed a nationwide curfew, warning
people to stay off the streets until further notice. A flight
headed to the capital of Bamako was forced to make a U-turn in the
air after the airport closed.


      The soldiers said they are overthrowing the government because
of its mishandling of an ethnic Tuareg insurgency in the country's
north that began in mid-January. The rebellion grew when fighters
who had supported the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi returned
home heavily armed. The unrest has forced tens of thousands to
flee, and has prompted fierce criticism of Mali's government.


      Early Thursday, a group of around 20 soldiers in military
fatigues were shown on national television crowding around a desk,
facing the camera.


      They announced that Mali is now under the control of the
military's National Committee for the Reestablishment of Democracy
and the Restoration of the State, or CNRDR. They said they were
suspending Mali's constitution and dissolving its institutions.


      The soldiers complained that the civilian government had not
done enough to combat a rebellion by the ethnic Tuareg separatists,
who want to carve out a homeland in the country's northern desert.


      "The CNRDR representing all the elements of the armed forces,
defensive forces and security forces has decided to assume its
responsibilities and end the incompetent and disavowed regime of
(President) Amadou Toumani Toure," they said, reading from a
statement. "The objective of the CNRDR does not in any way aim to
confiscate power, and we solemnly swear to return power to a
democratically elected president as soon as national unity and
territorial integrity are established."


      The West African regional bloc ECOWAS said it "strongly
condemns the misguided actions of the mutineers." The group said
it was "all the more reprehensible, coming amidst the ongoing
regional and international efforts to seek a peaceful solution to
the rebellion in the north of the country."


      The soldiers' declaration also came just hours after the
presidential palace had rushed to deny that a coup was in progress,
issuing a Tweet that said: "There is no coup in Mali. There's just
a mutiny."


      The latest developments mark a major setback for one of the
region's few established democracies. The ousted president came to
power himself in a 1991 coup, but was hailed for handing power to
civilians. A decade later, he won the 2002 democratic election. The
63-year-old Toure - known by his initials ATT - was due to step
down next month after two, five-year terms.


      Contacted by telephone, a soldier at the palace said that the
president's bodyguards had failed to fight the renegade soldiers,
who burst in. They searched the grounds looking for him, but could
not find Toure.


      Young soldiers on motorcycles were shooting in the air Thursday
morning in the capital of Bamako. Businesses remained shuttered and
there was little traffic as most stayed home following the coup
announcement.


      The U.S. military has been training some Malian troops in
counterterrorism tactics to help the country fight al-Qaida-linked
militants who have kidnapped scores of foreigners and held them in
the desert.


      But soldiers fighting the Tuareg rebellion say they have not
been given sufficient supplies, including arms or food. Numerous
soldiers have been killed in the more than two-month-long
insurgency.

      On Wednesday, Defense Minister Gen. Sadio Gassama had come to a
military camp in the capital for an official visit but failed to
address the grievances of the rank-and-file soldiers in his speech
to the troops.


      Recruits started firing into the air Wednesday morning and by
afternoon, troops had surrounded the state television station,
yanking both the television and radio signals off the air for the
rest of the day. By Wednesday evening, troops had started rioting
at a military garrison located in the northern town of Gao, some
2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) away.


      A freelance journalist from Sweden who was driving to her hotel
near the TV station in Bamako around 4 p.m. Wednesday said that
trucks full of soldiers had surrounded the state broadcaster, where
they set up machine guns facing the building.


      "They came and started setting up checkpoints. There were
military in the streets, stopping people," said Katarina Hoije.
"When we reached our hotel which is just in front of the TV
station, there were lots of military outside, and more cars kept
arriving - pickup trucks with soldiers on them."


      The Tuaregs, a traditionally nomadic people spread across the
Sahara Desert, have risen up against the central government in Mali
several times since the country's independence from France in 1960.


      The newest rebellion launched in mid-January broke years of
relative peace, and has been fueled by the return of Tuaregs from
Libya who had fought in Gadhafi's army. Refugees have spilled over
into four of the countries neighboring Mali due to the uprising.


      Thousands of Tuaregs moved from Mali to Libya over the decades
beginning in the 1970s, and many joined special divisions of
Gadhafi's military where they earned higher salaries than in Mali.
A relationship developed between the Tuareg and Gadhafi, who
claimed they had distant blood links.


      When the Gadhafi regime fell last year, Tuareg troops smuggled
Gadhafi family members to neighboring Algeria and Niger. After
Gadhafi was killed in his hometown of Sirte in October, many
Tuaregs no longer felt safe in Libya and began returning to Mali.


      The government has not disclosed how many government soldiers
have been killed. The toll is believed to be significant and in
February, military widows led a protest, publicly grilling Toure on
television over his handling of the rebellion.


      Associated Press writers Rukmini Callimachi and Michelle Faul in
Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

Gallery

Soldiers looted the presidential palace
Thursday of one of the few established democracies in this corner
of Africa, hours after ousting Mali's president just one month
before he was due to step down at the end of his legal term.

Soldiers loot Mali presidency after ousting leader

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