Malian lawmakers and opposition figures demanded the departure Sunday of a junta that is struggling to assert its authority after ousting the west African nation's president.
As the political class slammed the putschists, 14 government officials including the prime minister and foreign minister began a hunger strike over their detention at a military barracks outside the capital which serves as the junta headquarters.
"There are 14 of us in a room of 12 square metres, sleeping three to a mattress. Our basic rights are being violated," said a message from one of the officials sent to AFP.
President Amadou Toumani Toure's whereabouts are unknown, but he is believed to be safe under the protection of his loyalist paratrooper guard.
In Bamako, still tense four days after the coup, several hundred people gathered at a meeting of 38 political parties who announced the formation of a united front against the junta.
"Our aim is clear, to get the junta to leave. This coup d'etat is unconstitutional and we will not accept it," said Soumaila Cisse, one of the main presidential candidates in polls that had been planned for April 29.
"Get out Captain (Amadou) Sanogo," opposition supporters shouted, referring to the coup's leader.
The National Assembly issued a statement demanding an immediate return to constitutional order, the opening of all borders, the release of all arrested government officials and for elections go ahead as planned.
Only one small opposition party has declared support for the coup.
Some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) to the north, soldiers said Sunday they had fought off a Tuareg rebel attack in Kidal, one of the region's key cities.
"Today we repelled an attack by Islamist rebels," a military official in Kidal told AFP on condition of anonymity, referring to one of two rebel movements fighting for independence of the traditional homeland of the desert nomads.
The Islamist rebel group Ansar Dine said in a statement Saturday its fighters were on the verge of taking Kidal, hoping to capitalise on the confusion in the south where they coup played out.
Ansar Dine, which means Defenders of Faith in Arabic, is one of two rebel movements involved in the separatist battle.
While they seek the imposition of Islamic law, the other group, the Azawad National Liberation Movement, has distanced itself from religious objectives.
The desert tribes in January launched their first rebellion since 2009 in a decades-old demand for independence, boosted by the return of heavily-armed battle-hardened fighters from Libya who served late dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Their forces overwhelmed the weak Malian army, and scores of soldiers are said to have been killed and captured, causing anger among troops over the way the conflict is being handled by the government.
Angry soldiers revolted in Bamako on Wednesday, leading to a full-blown coup early Thursday as they seized government buildings and forced the president to flee.
Junta leader Sanogo has invited the rebels to hold talks and begin a "peace process" as he tries to restore order.
In a meeting with French ambassador Christian Rouyer on Saturday, Paris had pressed Sanogo to give up the putsch and hold April polls as scheduled, cooperation minister Henri de Raincourt said Sunday.
Sanogo had "not yet responded" to the demands, the minister said in televised remarks.
The junta has been largely frozen out by the international community in a chorus of rebukes and suspension of aid.
Mali will on Monday will mark the 21st anniversary of the last coup, when Toure led the overthrow of dictator Moussa Traore and steered the country to its first democratic election a year later, for which he is considered a hero.
After Mali's democratic advances in the past two decades, Thursday's coup alarmed the international community, which reacted with swift condemnation.
The African Union temporarily suspended Mali, while Europe and Canada froze aid and the United States has threatened to follow suit.
Leaders from the regional Economic Community of West African States will hold an emergency meeting in Abidjan on Tuesday, the day the junta has called for civil servants to return to work.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mali-army-claims-upper-hand-over-rebels-amid-140844350.html
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