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 staged 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. Local media and opposition leaders suggested there were dozens more victims.
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 named 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. He said most of the dead were youths who died of gunshot wounds.
Two more deaths were reported in Guinea's second-largest city, KanKan, on Saturday. Witnesses said a security officer shot a youth, then angry residents chased after the officer and attacked and burned him to death.
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. Local media reported at least 12 dead across the country.
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 population of 10 million is 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.
