Bamako: Mali’s PM and cabinet resigned on Thursday following a motion of no confidence in the government over its handling of violence in the centre of the country, according to the presidency. A statement from President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s office said he had accepted Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga’s resignation, along with his ministers, after mass protests last month over the rising tide of violence. The statement said a successor would be named soon, once consultations with ruling and opposition parties had taken place.
The government had come under mounting pressure over its handling of violence in the restive Mopti region and especially a massacre on March 23 in which 160 people were killed in the village of Ogossagou near the border with Burkina Faso. Members of the Dogon ethnic group — a hunting and farming community with a long history of tension with the nomadic Fulani people over access to land — were accused of being behind the mass killing. Thousands of people took to the streets of Bamako on April 5 to protest the upsurge of violence, accusing the govt of not doing enough to stop it.
—Agencies