Mutineering Malian troops have seized the country's president and prime minister in an apparent coup after months of protests against the regime.
Soldiers surrounded a house and fired guns in the air to cheers from protesters, in a day of dramatic unrest in the West African country's capital city of Bamako.
The mutinous troops said they had detained the president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and prime minister Boubou Cisse. A regional official confirmed this.
One of the soldier's leaders told AFP: "We can tell you that the president and the prime minister are under our control."
Protests began in the garrison town of Kati near Bamako, where soldiers took weapons from a barracks' armoury and arrested senior military officers.
Demonstrators cheered the soldiers’ actions, with some even setting fire to a Bamako building that belongs to Mali’s justice minister.
Prime Minister Boubou Cisse had earlier urged the soldiers to lay down their weapons
“There is no problem whose solution cannot be found through dialogue,” he said.
Armed men also detained other civilian officials including finance minister Abdoulaye Daffe.
Mr Keita, who came to power in a democratic election in 2013, has tried to meet the protesters’ demands through a series of concessions since the demonstrations began in June.
He has broad support from the country's former coloniser France and other Western powers. Tuesday’s developments were immediately condemned by ECOWAS, the regional body that had been mediating the crisis.
France and the United States also strongly criticised the unrest. J Peter Pham, the State Department’s special envoy for the Sahel region, tweeted: “The US is opposed to all unconstitutional changes of government whether in the streets or by security forces.”
Mali has experienced years of unrest since a 2012 coup allowed an Islamic insurgency to take hold in the West African nation.
