OWN CORRESPONDENT, Bissau | Monday 6.00pm.
GUINEA-Bissau’s small port capital calmed down on Sunday after post-coup clashes between military junta forces and backers of the toppled head of state killed at least six people.
Troops patrolled the city where the main Bandim market and stores were open, while the radio of victorious forces headed by General Ansumane Mane called on the last soldiers loyal to ousted president Joao Bernardo Vieira to give themselves up.Heavy arms and machine-gun fire claimed at least six lives on Saturday as junta troops mopped up Vieira’s men, bringing the total provisional toll in the violence that erupted on Thursday to at least 80 dead and 263 injured, many seriously.
Portugal granted political asylum to Vieira on Sunday.
Sources close to the junta, which claims it will leave politics to the politicians and let elections due in November go ahead, said officials of the routed regime were arrested and handed over to west African Ecomog intervention troops “to guarantee their safety”.
Among top brass rounded up were defence minister Samba Lamine Mane, the chief of general staff and his deputy, Generals Humberto Gomes and Alfonso Te, with state security chief Joao Monteiro, while several hundred loyalist soldiers surrendered and were disarmed.
Though in the hands of Ecomog — which deployed in February under a peace accord signed in Abuja, Nigeria, last November in a bid to the war between Mane’s junta and Vieira loyalists — one source said the arrested officials would appear in court over suspected arms trafficking to separatists in neighbouring Senegal’s Casamance province.
Alleged gun-running sparked the conflict in the former Portuguese colony of some one million people, where Vieira accusing Mane of allowing it and dismissed him as armed forces chief early last June.
That led to wildfire insurrection by most of the armed forces from June 7. Mane’s men dug at barracks north of the tropical capital and the general accused Vieira of suppressing parliamentary debate of a report which would have shown him up as the guilty party.
Vieira had been in power since 1980. His renown as a hero of the war for independence in 1974 was tarnished by corruption in one of the world’s 15 poorest countries, as well as his autocratic style after the end of Marxist rule and the introduction of multi-party politics.
The coup was condemned by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which mediated the November pact and sent some 600 troops, while Senegalese and Guinean soldiers rapidly sent to prop up Vieira were pulled out.
But numbers of Guinea-Bissau’s people have hailed the end of the Vieira era and chances of a return to peace and stability. Who will replace him was the main question on Sunday. — AFP