BAMAKO, Oct 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Hundreds of civil servants in Mali demonstrated in the capital, Bamako, to call for the release of local administrators held by militants.
The protesters walked to the prime minister’s office where they presented their petition. They said more than 10 local administrators were being held by the militants.
Last week, the militants released French aid worker Sophie Pétronin, 75, and veteran opposition and former presidential candidate Soumaïla Cissé, 70, The releases are part of a deal that includes more than 100 imprisoned militnts being set free by the authorities.
Mali has been struggling to contain an insurgency that first emerged in the north of the country in 2012, which has since spread to the centre of the country and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.
“The objective of this march is to support our comrades taken hostage by terrorists,” Abdoulaye Djire, a civil administrator, said.
“We cannot understand how we can release four hostages, including three foreigners, against more than 200 terrorist prisoners, forgetting the representatives of the state,” he added.
The prisoner release happened under an interim government due to govern Mali for 18 months before staging elections, after a military junta overthrew president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.
The kidnapping of former opposition leader Cisse was one of the factors that fuelled popular protests which led to the ouster of Keita over his perceived inability to tackle jihadists and the Islamist insurgency.
Only 17 percent of civil administrators were present in northern Mali and the central Mopti region as of Aug 31 due to insecurity in those areas, according to the latest quarterly report on Mali by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. — NNN-AGENCIES
