Mali: Ex-President Amadou Toumani Toure dies

Former Mali President Amadou Toumani Toure has died at the age of 72, a family member said on Tuesday.

"Amadou Toumani Toure died during the night of Monday to Tuesday in Turkey," where he had been taken for health reasons, his nephew Oumar Toure told the news agency AFP.

The former army general was celebrated for enacting democratic reforms in the West African nation, but was ousted in a military coup in 2012.

Toure came to power in 1991, when he led a coup against dictator Moussa Traore, after 22 years of hardline rule. Traore died in Mali September. 

A doctor in the Malian capital of Bamako told AFP news agency that Toure had recently undergone heart surgery in the city's Luxembourg Hospital, which he had helped to found.

Although "everything seemed to be going well," he transferred to Turkey for medical reasons, the doctor said.

Military coup

Toure, often called simply ATT after his initials, won presidential elections in 2002 and again in 2007. However, mutinous soliders accused him of failing to support their fight against both Tuareg rebels and jihadist insurgents, and overthew him.

This led to a period of chaos, allowing jihadist groups to overrun the north of the country. A 2013 French intervention ousted the jihadists, but they were able to regroup and expand into central Mali.

From there, they started a bloody ethnic conflict, and advanced into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

In August, the military ousted the elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, after mounting protests, with the involvement of some of the officers involved in Toure's overthrow.

aw/rt (AFP, Reuters, AP)