[ad_1]
BAMAKO – Clashes took place Thursday in Timbuktu, a town in northern Mali, between Arab, Tuareg and black communities, a few days before the elections considered a security test of the country, said the local governor. President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita will seek a second term Sunday amid growing dissatisfaction over the government's security record, particularly in the central desert and north where Islamist groups armed protesters in the community Malian Arabs burned tires and set fire to vehicles in Timbuktu on Wednesday, to protest the worsening of insecurity and alleged mistreatment by security forces
For Wednesday's violence was a robbery of a pharmacy owned by a black trader. Malian troops retaliated by arresting armed Arab youths, triggering a shooting in which no one was injured.
On Thursday, a hundred people took to the streets and clashes erupted between Arabs and light-skinned Tuaregs. . The violence died out in the afternoon, Governor General Ould Maudou told Reuters. READ: Opposition opposition in Mali warns against potential vote fraud Presidential "The situation in Timbuktu is calming down," he said. The Arab and Tuareg communities of Timbuktu have long complained of being persecuted by Malian soldiers, mainly composed of ethnic groups from the south and the center
. continues to shake Mali, especially the north, five years after French forces repelled a separatist and Islamist insurgency in 2013.
President Keita is facing former finance minister Soumaila Cissé and two dozen other candidates in Sunday's elections. did not specifically threaten the conduct of the polls, the disturbances seriously threaten to reduce voter turnout, hoping that some observers hoped to emerge from years of political and ethnic unrest.
Reuters
Source link
