BAMAKO, Mali — The owner of a Traverse City-based travel company and five clients are trapped in a west African nation after an unexpected coup derailed their plans.
Jessica Pociask, owner of Wildlife & Nature Travel Expeditions and the clients are in Bamako, Mali, where a group of drunken soldiers declared a coup on Thursday, suspending the constitution and dissolving the institutions of one of the few established democracies in Africa.
"They were supposed to fly from Bamako, Mali, to Accra, Ghana, but before they could take off ... there was a military coup," said Peter Smith, a WANT employee still in Traverse City. "The driver was on the way to the hotel and he was shot at. They had to hide the four-wheel drive vehicle at the hotel, and she can hear gunfire all around her."
Smith said Pociask and the clients are safe, holed up in a secure hotel in the country's capital. The U.S. Embassy advised them to stay at that location until demonstrations and gunfire die down, which they hope happens by early next week.
The soldiers looted Mali's presidential palace hours after they declared the coup. The whereabouts of the country's 63-year-old President Amadou Toumani Toure, who was just one month away from stepping down after a decade in office, could not be confirmed.
The mutineers said they were overthrowing the government because of its mishandling of an ethnic insurgency in the country's north that began in January. Tens of thousands of Malian civilians have been forced to flee. The soldiers sent to fight the separatists have been killed in large numbers, often after being sent to the battlefield with inadequate arms and food supplies, prompting fierce criticism of the government.
The coup began Wednesday, after young troops mutinied at a military camp near the capital.
The coup is a major setback for Mali, a landlocked nation of 15.4 million that is dirt-poor but fiercely proud of its democratic credentials. The current president, a former parachutist in the army, came to power himself in a 1991 coup. He surprised the world when he handed power to civilians, becoming known as "The Soldier of Democracy."
WANT's Peter Smith said the company offers regular trips through west Africa, and the news of the unrest came as a complete surprise.
"This is a pillar (of) democracy in west Africa," he said. "It's not like we're in Uganda or south Sudan. This is an extremely stable area."
Region
TC group trapped in military coup
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