Bloc suspends Mali following coup

The presidents of Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Niger and Burkino Faso are set to arrive in Mali tomorrow.

The Economic Community of West African States is also putting a soldiers on standby.

Ghanaian Foreign Minister Alhaji Muhammad Mumuni that the bloc had condemned the coup in "strong and unequivocal terms and demanded a return to democracy."

France, the European Union and the United States have already cut off all but essential aid.

And more regional sanctions would be a further blow to US-trained junta chief Amadou Sanogo.

Captain Sanogo and his men seized control of the country after a mutiny at a military camp in Bamako last Wednesday.

Soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the ensuing chaos.

It's not known where President Amadou Toumani Toure is now but he reportedly hasn't be harmed.

His government had struggled to stop a Tuareg uprising that started in the north in January.

The Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) fighters, some of whom had fought Nato-backed Libyan rebels last year, saw off the ill-equipped government troops sent by Mr Toure.

Some of the heavy weaponry that Qatar and France airdropped to rebels in Libya seems to have got into MNLA hands.

Over 200,000 people have been forced to flee their homes by the uprising and hundreds are feared dead.

Gilles Yabi of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said there was a "direct connection" between the bloodshed in Mali and Nato's ousting of Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi.

Since then, "Libya's borders have not been controlled at all and the flows of weapons out of Libya have not been controlled at all," Mr Yabi said.

About 50 people have died in ongoing clashes between rival paramilitary squads in southern Libya in recent days.