The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) has said Bangladeshi peacekeepers stationed in Mali were safe amid the recent political turmoil in the West African nation.
“Political unrest prevails in the West African nation of Mali. However, Bangladeshi peacekeepers along other UN peacekeepers stationed in Mali are currently safe,” said an ISPR statement issued on Thursday.
Mali fell into fresh political turmoil on Tuesday after the country’s president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita resigned and dissolved the parliament hours after mutinying soldiers detained him at gunpoint, plunging a country already facing a jihadist insurgency and mass protests deeper into crisis, reports Reuters.
The West African nation saw months of protests against alleged corruption and worsening security in the country where Islamist militants are active, and calling for Keita to resign.
The M5-RFP coalition behind the protests signalled support for the mutineers’ action, with spokesman Nouhoum Togo telling Reuters it was “not a military coup but a popular insurrection.”
France and other international powers as well as the African Union denounced the mutiny, fearful that Keita’s fall could further destabilize the former French colony and West Africa’s entire Sahel region.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the immediate release of Keita and the other detainees, the report added.
A mutiny in 2012 at the same Kati base led to a military coup that toppled then-president Amadou Toumani Toure and hastened the fall of Mali’s north to jihadist militants.