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Clashes among two military factions broke out on Thursday night time soon after two federal government officials were freed from custody.
Gunfire and clashes that erupted in the capital of Guinea-Bissau this week had been an “attempted coup”, President Umaro Sissoco Embalo has claimed.
Clashes in between the Countrywide Guard and specific forces of the presidential guard broke out in Bissau on Thursday evening and ongoing on Friday after Countrywide Guard troopers freed two senior federal government officials who ended up detained on a corruption investigation.
The unrest in the tiny West African country remaining at minimum two folks dead.
Embalo, who was in Dubai attending the COP28 local weather conference, arrived in Bissau on Saturday and explained an “attempted coup d’etat” experienced prevented him from returning.
“I must convey to you this act will have significant outcomes,” he included.
Calm had returned by midday on Friday to the nation with a historical past of instability, adhering to the announcement that the army experienced captured Colonel Victor Tchongo, the commander of the Nationwide Guard.
On Saturday, the protection existence in Bissau was reduced but soldiers were even now visible about sure strategic structures this kind of as the presidential palace, the judicial police headquarters and some ministries.
Some Countrywide Guard officers and troopers fled into the interior of the place, the military explained in a assertion on Saturday, with out specifying figures.
ECOWAS condemns violence
The Economic Group of West African States (ECOWAS) stated it “strongly condemns the violence and all attempts to disrupt the constitutional buy and rule of legislation in Guinea-Bissau”.
“ECOWAS further calls for the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators of the incident in accordance with the law,” the Abuja-centered organisation extra in its assertion on Saturday.
The regional bloc also expressed “its whole solidarity with the people today and constitutional authorities of Guinea-Bissau”.
A spokesman for United Nations chief Antonio Guterres, Stephane Dujarric, on Friday known as for relaxed and urged the security forces and the military “to go on refraining from interference in national politics”.
Corruption allegations
The AFP information agency, quoting armed forces and intelligence resources, reported members of the Nationwide Guard on Thursday stormed a law enforcement station to totally free Finance Minister Souleiman Seidi and Treasury Secretary Antonio Monteiro.
The duo experienced been taken in for questioning on Thursday early morning about the noted withdrawal of $10m from point out coffers. They experienced been detained beneath orders of state prosecutors who are named by the president.
They had been later detained once more soon after the army removed them from Countrywide Guard handle.
The Nationwide Guard is beneath the regulate of the inside ministry, which, like most ministries in the nation, is dominated by the PAIGC social gathering whose coalition received the June 2023 elections.
There have been at least 10 coups or attempted coups in Guinea-Bissau given that independence from Portugal in 1974, with only one particular democratically-elected president finishing a whole time period in office.
Embalo, who was elected to a 5-calendar year phrase in December 2019, survived a failed overthrow in February 2022.
West Africa has been hit by several military takeovers about the previous 3 a long time, which includes two in Mali, a person in Guinea, two in Burkina Faso and 1 in Gabon.
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