Mali’s military junta has categorically denied an alleged failed assassination attempt against an advisor to its leader and the country’s transitional president, Colonel Assimi Goita, sources close to the incident told French daily ‘Libération’.
According to the newspaper, last Wednesday, November 2, an unidentified sniper shot Captain Souleymane Traoré as he was leaving the presidential palace of Koulouba, located on a hill in the capital, Bamako. The bullet hit the soldier’s chest but was stopped by the bulletproof vest he was wearing, according to three security sources.
Malian military authorities had previously denounced an alleged failed assassination attempt against Goita on July 20, 2021, or the alleged coup attempts against the colonels in November 2021 and May 2022.
However, the Malian government has this time completely denied this alleged attack against Captain Traoré, in what it describes as a «macabre scenario invented from scratch,» according to a statement published late Saturday by Maliweb.
Mali’s acting prime minister, Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, has instead accused the media of being «sponsored by obscurantist and retrograde forces», with the sole aim of «creating psychosis and «desperately destabilizing the transition process» with an «unprofessional, shameless and immoral maneuver».
The African country is now in the midst of a transition process since Goita led the August 2020 uprising against the then Malian president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, and subsequently led a second coup in May 2021 against the transitional authorities–at which point he overthrew the president and prime minister, Bah Ndaw and Moctar Ouane–and rose to power.
