JOIN USGuinea-Bissau's president and prime minister were in army custody on Friday after troops staged an apparent coup just two weeks ahead of a presidential run-off vote in the chronically unstable west African country.
A bodyguard of interim president Raimundo Pereira said soldiers arrested him at his home during the putsch on Thursday and took him to an “unknown destination.”
Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior — tipped to win the ballot set for April 29 — was also arrested and whisked away in a pickup truck, his wife Salome said. The army, however, said that it has “no ambition for power” in the troubled country of 1.6 million people, following an earlier statement that it acted in response to an alleged “secret deal” between Guinea-Bissau and Angola, which has 200 troops in the country ostensibly to help reform the military.
“The military command has no ambition for power,” the army said in a statement, alleging that the government was bent on “eliminating the army with a foreign military force.”
The Angolan troop presence has been a bone of contention between the Guinea-Bissau government and army amid suspicions that it was being secretly built up.
Late on Thursday, soldiers armed with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles seized the ruling party headquarters and the state radio station as gunfire resounded and ambulance sirens wailed in the capital Bissau, which was plunged into darkness as electricity was cut off.
A military source said those arrested were taken to army headquarters at Amura, near the coast of the impoverished country that has seen half a dozen coups or attempted coups since 1980 and has become a hub for drug-running.
The US embassy in Senegal called for the return of civilian rule, saying: “It is regrettable that elements of the Bissau-Guinean military have chosen to derail the democratic process in Guinea-Bissau.”