Shootout after military storm
2003-09-26 17:14
Bissau - An armed group tried to storm a key military installation in Guinea-Bissau early on Friday, sparking a fierce shootout with soldiers backing the military junta that seized power this month, witnesses and military sources said.
The compound in Mansoa, some 50km from the capital Bissau, houses an arms and ammunition depot and is considered one of the most important military facilities in the former Portuguese colony.
Violent shooting broke out around 04:00, causing panic among local residents still edgy since president Kumba Yala was ousted in a bloodless coup on September 14, a journalist for the local radio station Sol Mansi said by telephone.
Witnesses said two of the attackers were killed and one wounded.
In Rome, the same casualty toll was given by the Misna Catholic missionaries, quoting one of their priests, Father Davide Sciocco, who heads the diocesan-run Radio Sol Mansi in Guinea-Bissau, though he did specify which side the victims came from.
Sciocco said the gunbattle lasted four-and-a-half hours.
Military headquarters in Bissau refused comment.
The Mansoa military compound houses a battalion of 650 men is considered a back-up base should trouble erupt in the capital.
Radio Sol Mansi quoted local authorities who said the situation was under control and urged residents to remain calm. Neither the attackers nor their number were immediately known.
In Lisbon, military sources quoted by Lusa news agency said soldiers were chasing the attackers, who fled north towards the town of Farim near the border with Senegal, and that heavily armed military reinforcements were being sent in from the capital to help in the chase.
It said there was a strong military presence both in Mansoa and on roads leading in and out of the city, while other soldiers carried out door-to-door searches for the assailants.
Several hundred armed men had concentrated in Mansoa since the military junta 12 days ago, Lusa reported, citing unnamed local sources.
The putschists, who said they ousted Yala because he had plunged the country into economic and political chaos, on Tuesday named civilian Henrique Rosa as interim president and political leader Antonio Artur Sanha as prime minister of a transition government.
While Rosa has been broadly welcomed by the main political and civic players, Sanha has been strongly contested by at least five political parties.
Sanha is the head of the ruling Party of Renewal (PRS), which was founded by Yala. Opposition has focussed on his connection to the party, even though he was an outspoken critic of Yala, as well as the fact that he remains under suspicion over the unresolved murder of a young woman.
The junta has said pledged to step aside for a transitional administration, which will be tasked with guiding the nation to democratic elections, but has warned it will take at least two years to prepare the polls. Others are pressing for a vote in less than a year.
The economy of the tiny nation of 1.5 million people has come to a virtual standstill since the coup, with food shortages reported in the capital.
Portugal's foreign minister Antonio Martins da Cruz said Friday he would seek €10m in financial aid next week from the European Union for Guinea-Bissau.
On Wednesday, Guinea-Bissau celebrated 30 years of independence from Portugal, during which time the economy of the country has steadily declined and the infrastructure decayed.
80% of the country's population - spread out across the territory between Senegal and Guinea, and on an archipelago of around two dozen islands - live on less than a dollar a day.