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Mali: Interim president asks PM to for government
“Let us pray for Mali, let us pray for peace,” urged Mahmoud Dicko, the head of Mali’s High Islamic Council, as he addressed a crowd estimated at between 50,000 and 60,000.
Dicko recently met with the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), one of two Islamist groups, along with Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), occupying the north of the country.
The takeover was spearheaded by Tuareg rebels seeking an independent state for their nomadic desert tribe, but the extremists have pushed them aside and seek an Islamic state in the zone, an area larger than France.
The groups, which security experts believe are acting under the aegis of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), have since imposed strict Islamic law in northern Mali, prompting outrage as they stoned an unmarried couple to death last month and cut off the hand of a thief on Wednesday.
