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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Guinea-Bissau president escapes coup attempt |
| 2008-11-24 |
| The president of Guinea-Bissau survived an apparent coup attempt in the West African nation Sunday, emerging from his bullet-scarred home hours after his guards repelled mutinous soldiers to declare that they wanted to kill him. President Joao Bernardo Vieira hid in a room in his heavily fortified home while security forces turned back the soldiers in a three-hour gunbattle, Interior Minister Cipriano Cassama said. The attack had begun with heavy artillery fire on Vieira's home shortly after midnight. Vieira and his wife were unhurt, but at least one of his guards died and several others were injured, Cassama said. "These people attacked my residence with a single objective--to physically liquidate me," Vieira told the nation in a televised news conference from his home. "No one has the right to massacre the people of Guinea-Bissau in order to steal power by means of the gun." The walls of his fortified house were scarred with bullets and its floors still were littered with shell casings. Calm appeared to have returned to the capital, Bissau, and Vieira assured the country that the "situation is under control." Guinea-Bissau, an impoverished nation on Africa's Atlantic coast, has had multiple coups and attempted coups since 1980, when Vieira himself first took power in one. The U.N. says Guinea-Bissau is a key transit point for cocaine smuggled from Latin America to Europe. |
| Posted by:Fred |