Category: Mali

By Tiemoko Diallo BAMAKO (Reuters) - Islamist gunmen stormed a luxury hotel packed with foreigners in Mali's capital Bamako on Friday, taking 170 hostages in a former French colony that has been battling rebels allied with al Qaeda for several years. A senior security source said some of the hostages had been freed after being made to recite verses from... Read More

BAMAKO: Militants fleeing Timbuktu in the face of a French-led offensive in Mali have torched a building housing ancient Arabic manuscripts, security and army sources said Monday. “A building housing the manuscripts was burned,” a security source told AFP. Timbuktu, which was the intellectual and spiritual capital of Islam in Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries, is renowned for... Read More

SEVARE, MALI—French and Malian forces pushed toward the fabled desert town of Timbuktu on Sunday, as the two-week-long French mission gathered momentum against the Islamist extremists who have ruled the north for more than nine months. So far the French forces have met little resistance, though it remains unclear what battles may await them farther north. The Malian military blocked... Read More

The US and Western-backed overthrow of Libya's Ghadaffi irrevocably altered Africa's continental landscape. Chad and Mali, already paralyzed by excessive debt and climate change, are in the crosshairs of well-armed rebel “movements” operating across the Libyan border, backed by the West and financed by Saudi Arabia. . Read More

France’s recent military action in Mali has raised many questions about the French Socialists’ rhetoric touting their belief in democracy and freedom.  French President Francois Hollande seems to have committed a big mistake in Mali, and many compare the move to former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s decision to attack Afghanistan in 1979. The military action is expected to have huge... Read More

DAKAR, SENEGAL — Mali's interim president has appointed a new prime minister. The move comes less than 24 hours after the former interim prime minister resigned following his arrest by soldiers loyal to the military junta that overthrew the elected government in March. Mali's interim president, Dioncounda Traore, said Tuesday night on state television that he had accepted the resignation... Read More

With the unnerving undercurrents of developments in the vast wastelands of the Sahel and the Sahara in the north of Mali, Nigeria has real cause to worry. It rightly, as put forward by traditionalists, has to worry about dangerous elements determined to entrench themselves in its neighborhood. But Nigeria has to worry about many more things linked to its impending... Read More

Interview with Moctar Mariko, President of the Malian Association for Human Rights (AMDH) How has the situation evolved in the North of Mali these past few months? The situation in the North of Mali remains practically unchanged for us. From a humanitarian perspective, I’ve just been informed that since the establishment of the corridor many families in the North of Mali... Read More