Longstanding hostility between the Tuareg (Touareg), nomadic Berber Muslim people, and Mali's dictatorial president Moussa Traore (1936-) erupted into bloddy conflict between Tuareg separatists and government troops in the Menaka area in late June 1990. Although a military coup overthrew Traore in 1991 and civilian Alpha Oumar Konare (1946-) was elected president in 1992, various Tuareg liberation groups continued to clash with troops in the northern region of Mali, a large, landlocked West African country lying partly in the Sahara Desert. Despite peace accords signed in 1991 and 1992, fighting continued along the Mali-Mauritanian frontier and in the Bamba and Gao areas (the Niger Bend). Later, the powerful Tuareg coalition force, the Unified Movements and Fronts of Azawad (MFUA), signed two agreements with the government (1993 and 1994) that allowed the incorporation of some 7,000 Tuareg rebels into the regular army and other government bodies. In October 1995, Mali began the repatriation of some 120,000 Tuareg refugees living in camps in neighboring Mauritania, Algeria, Burkina Faso, and Niger. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Azawad and other Tuareg rebel groups agreed to disarm and demobilize, thus officially ending the war (March 27, 1996) and again permitting free movement across Mali's northern region.