The soldiers who staged a putsch in Mali five weeks ago said Tuesday they had defeated an overnight counter-coup by foreign-backed forces loyal to ousted president Amadou Toumani Toure.
Gunfire had erupted at the national television and radio station, the airport and at the garrison town near the capital Bamako that is the headquarters of the rebel soldiers led by Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo. An employee of the TV and radio station, which had been held by rebel soldiers since the March 22 coup, told AFP that “there were deaths” in the gunfight, without giving casualty figures.
The resurgence of fighting dimmed hopes for a quick return to order in the west African country where political chaos has allowed Tuareg rebels and Islamists to seize swathes of the vast desert north. A soldier reading out a message on television on behalf of Sanogo said “foreign elements backed by dark forces from inside the country carried out these attacks,” adding that some of them were arrested.
The coup leaders, under intense regional and international pressure, have allowed a civilian interim government to take over but have kept making arrests, which witnesses said sparked the latest violence. The fighting followed an attempt by junta loyalists to detain Abidine Guindo, the former chief of staff of toppled president Toure. Guindo was the head of the “Red Berets” presidential guard.
