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Police kill 23 Guinean protesters

Protesters march during a demonstration on Monday in Conakry, Guinea. Police shot dead 17 protesters across Guinea on Monday, raising to 27 the death toll in almost two weeks of a general strike and demonstrations against Guinean President Lansana Conte. PHOTO: AFP

Police shot dead 23 protesters across Guinea on Monday, raising to 33 the death toll in almost two weeks of a general strike and demonstrations against Guinean President Lansana Conte's rule, medical and union officials said.

At least 169 have been recorded injured across the country.

The death toll made Monday the bloodiest day in the strike that started on Jan. 10 at the call of labor unions.

With 18 dead and 140 wounded, Conakry recorded the largest number of deaths.

"About 10 of the wounded are in a critical condition and could die soon considering our lack of resources," said a source at one of the capital's two largest hospitals.

In Kankan town east of the country, three demonstrators were killed and 22 wounded, among them seven seriously.

In neighboring Siguiri, two protesters were also shot dead while seven were injured, said Mamadi Conde, Kankan regional secretary general of the National Confederation of the Workers of Guinea.

Several labour union leaders behind the open-ended strike that has paralyzed Guinea, were arrested on Monday evening by members of the presidential guard, a union official said.

The crackdown by authorities has left UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "gravely concerned at the excessive use of force" by government troops in the former French colony.

Several opposition parties have called for the release of the unionists in the third mass strike in 12 months in this poverty-stricken west African country.

The protest, organized by powerful labor unions and backed by 14 opposition parties, began on Jan. 10 over endemic corruption and interference in the judiciary by Conte after he freed two associates facing trial for embezzlement.

Strike leaders then demanded that Conte, who has been in power for the past 23 years, be constitutionally removed by the Supreme Court on the grounds that he is too unwell to hold office.

Michele Montas, spokeswoman for the UN secretary general, said Ki-moon wanted an official probe of the deadly clashes with opponents of Conte's rule.

Several thousand people also took to streets in the central towns of Pita and Dabola and at Telemele in the north, demanding an end to the rule of the 72-year-old head of state, who is suffering from chronic diabetes, witnesses said.

Protesters want a new broad-based government to take over, demanding the naming of a prime minister to fill a post left empty since April and form a government of national unity as a condition for lifting the strike call, labor leader Mamadou Alpha Barry said.

Conte on Saturday dismissed union demands calling on the military to back his government, a day after sacking his number two, minister for presidential affairs Fode Bangoura, and giving Planning Minister Eugene Camara more responsibility.

Sekou Konate, the secretary general of Conte's ruling party, on Sunday described the strike as "a political insurrection"

The UN chief urged the Conakry administration and parties concerned "to engage in dialogue" to seek "a peaceful solution to the dispute."

A meeting planned for Monday between the unions and authorities failed to take off due to the violence.

Mediation by the presidents of Senegal and Nigeria, Abdoulaye Wade and Olusegun Obasanjo, acting for the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States, was postponed by a few days at the request of Conakry.

Obasanjo has not yet decided if and when to embark on the mediation mission to Guinea, his spokesman said.

Guinea has in recent years been mired in a social, economic and political crisis with Conte's failing health raising fears of a power vacuum in the event of his death.

Conte has run the west African country since a bloodless military coup in 1984. He was twice hospitalized last year in Switzerland.
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