Guinean President Joao Bernardo Vieira has reassured residents of Guinea-Bissau by news conference from his bullet-scarred home after mutinous soldiers fought their way into the residence in a three-hour gun battle with his guards.
In an apparent coup attempt, the soldiers attacked Vieira’s home on Sunday with heavy artillery fire shortly after midnight, killing at least one of his guards and injuring several others before security forces were able to push them back, Guinean Interior Minister Cipriano Cassama said earlier. The attackers did not reach the room where Vieira was hiding and neither he nor his wife were hurt, Cassama said.
“These people attacked my residence with a single objective — to physically liquidate me,” Vieira told the nation in a late afternoon televised news conference. “No one has the right to massacre the people of Guinea-Bissau in order to steal power by means of the gun.”
PHOTO: EPA
The walls of his fortified house were scarred with bullets and its floors were still littered with shell casings.
But calm appeared to have returned to the capital, Bissau, and Vieira assured citizens that “the situation is under control.”
Guinea-Bissau has had multiple coups and attempted coups since 1980, when Vieira himself first took power in one.
The UN says impoverished Guinea-Bissau, on the Atlantic coast of Africa, is a key transit point for cocaine smuggled from Latin America to Europe.
In parliamentary elections held a week ago, opposition leader and former Guinean president Kumba Yala accused Vieira of being the country’s top drug trafficker. Vieira did not respond to the accusation.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade ordered troops to the border with Guinea-Bissau on Sunday after receiving a panicked phone call from Vieira in the night, Wade’s spokesman El Hadj Amadou Sall said.
“The troops will stay at the border until we are sure the situation has stabilized,” Sall said.
The African Union (AU) quickly condemned the attack.
The AU rejects “any unconstitutional change of government and condemns in advance any attempt to seize power by force,” AU commission chairman Jean Ping said in a statement.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack, his spokesman said.
Ban noted “with great concern reports of the alleged involvement of elements of the Armed Forces of Guinea-Bissau in the attack, and calls upon them to refrain from any measures that could further destabilize the country,” the spokesman said in a statement.
The UN secretary-general’s representative in Guinea-Bissau, Shola Omoregie, told reporters that the international community condemned the attack.
“It’s unacceptable that after legitimate elections they could attack the president and try to kill him,” he said.
His comments were echoed by Carlos Gomes, a former prime minister who now heads the majority party: “It’s unacceptable in the 21st century to resolve our problems with violence.”
Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony, has a history of coups and misrule.
Vieira initially seized power in a 1980 coup. He was pushed out in 1998 during a brief civil war. In 2000, Yala won the presidential election, ruling until 2003, when he was forced from power in a coup. Vieira won the 2005 presidential election and has ruled since then.
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