Bamako, Aug 18, 2020 – Gunfire broke out at a key army base near Mali’s capital Bamako on Tuesday, officials and witnesses said, triggering fears of a mutiny in the crisis-stricken Sahel state.  Details of the events were sketchy, but the sources said the soldiers fired their guns into the air at a base in Kati, a town some 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Bamako.  An officer at the camp told AFP that the gunfire was an act of “rebellion” and many soldiers were unhappy with Mali’s political situation. “We want change,” the officer said. The incident coincided with opposition plans to resume protests against the impoverished country’s embattled president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. “There were lots of them and they were very nervous,” a doctor in Kati told AFP, referring to the soldiers.

A 2012 putsch that opened the way to Keita’s presidency began in the Kati base, and the accounts of gunfire sparked fears of another coup attempt in the fragile country.  Protesters also gathered on Bamako’s Independence Square on Tuesday, AFP journalists saw. Some later looted the office of the justice minister, which lies just off the square.  The embassy of France, the former colonial power, recommended on social media on Tuesday that everyone remain at home.  But an official at Mali’s ministry of defence told AFP that no “mutiny” was underway, adding however that the government was following the situation closely.

A Western diplomat in Bamako, who declined to named, described the events as “an attempt at mutiny”.  J. Peter Pham, the United States special envoy for the Sahel, said on Twitter that Washington “opposes all extra-constitutional change of government”.