Looking tired and wearing a surgical mask, Keita resigned in a brief address broadcast on state television hours after troops seized him along with Prime Minister Boubou Cisse and other top officials.
“If today, certain elements of our armed forces want this to end through their intervention, do I really have a choice?” he said from a military base in Kati outside the capital Bamako where he had been detained earlier in the day.
It was not immediately clear who was leading the revolt, who would govern in Keita’s absence or what the mutineers wanted.