AP Features, February 12th, 2007
Security forces blocked roads leading into the center of Guinea's capital Monday as the West African country's biggest unions restarted a strike and demanded the president step down.
It followed rioting Saturday in which at least 11 people died, according to medical officials and witnesses. Opposition leaders put the figure at over 30.
Groups of youths armed with machetes and sabers marched into suburban streets, shouting for change in protests that were broadcast by Guinea's FM Liberty radio station.
The president of Guinea's national assembly called in a statement for union and community leaders to return to negotiations with government officials, according to a statement read on the same station.
Union leaders were not immediately available for comment.
Last month, a two-week national strike brought Guinea to an economic standstill and quickly spiraled into protests that triggered clashes with security forces which left at least 59 people dead.
Union leaders called off that strike after President Lansana Conte agreed to appoint a consensus prime minister. But street fighting broke out again Saturday after Conte sidestepped a power-sharing agreement by naming a Cabinet ally to take up the post.
Staff Sergeant Boubacar Hassan Diallo said Monday even soldiers were being prevented from crossing a major bridge into the administrative center of Conakry, the capital. On the same bridge last month, soldiers fired into a crowd of people trying to march on the city.
Government buildings and stores were closed in the city center and suburbs and shots could be heard in the outlying neighborhood of Dixinn, as smoke rose over the area.
"I see from my window a thick black smoke rising above the stadium. They must be burning tires. I also hear shooting from time to time," resident Aminata Koroma told The Associated Press by telephone.
A number of buildings in the suburbs appeared to have been looted over the weekend, including government offices and diplomats' homes.
"The villa of the president of Guinea-Bissau was completely emptied. They broke everything and took everything," Ovid Kourouma, who saw the incident, told the AP by telephone.
Conte, who seized power in a 1984 coup, agreed last month that he would appoint a prime minister who was not be a current member of his government. On Friday, he named Eugene Camara, a Cabinet member since 1997, to the post. Camara served most recently as minister for presidential affairs.
In calling for the strike to restart, union leaders said they would no longer settle for any resolution other than Conte's exit.
"We don't recognize this prime minister, and anyway, it is no longer a question of the prime minister," said Ibrahima Fofana, the secretary-general of the Guinea Workers Union, one of two groups that led last month's strike. "We are asking for the departure, pure and simple, of President Lansana Conte."
On Saturday in Conakry, demonstrators threw rocks, ransacked government buildings and erected barricades of burning tires. Witnesses said security forces fired into the crowds.
Hassan Bah, director of Conakry's Igance Deen Hospital, said the city's morgue received the bodies of nine people killed in Saturday's clashes _ most dead from gunshot wounds. Witnesses reported two more deaths in Guinea's second-largest city, KanKan, on Saturday.
Ba Mamadou, spokesman for a coalition of opposition parties, said they had tallied reports from their supporters throughout the country and counted at least 20 dead in Conakry and 10 in other areas. FM Liberty reported at least 12 dead Saturday.
Air France and SN Brussels airlines canceled their flights from Guinea to Paris and Brussels Saturday, airport personnel said. It was not immediately clear if flights were operating Monday.
Guinea had been without a prime minister since April, when Conte fired Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo.
Guinea's 10 million people are impoverished and many live without the most basic public services, even though the country has half the world's reserves of bauxite, a material used to produce aluminum.
Opposition leaders have also called for Conte to step down, saying the ailing president has let corruption overrun Guinea as people struggle to meet basic needs.
