BISSAU: At least six people were killed in a failed attempt to overthrow Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, state radio said on Wednesday, as residents of the capital cautiously returned to daily life.
The dead in Tuesday’s incident included four assailants and two members of the presidential guard, it said. Embalo had announced on Tuesday night that the situation was under control after gunfire rang out for more than five hours near a government compound where he was holding a cabinet meeting.
The West African country, which has a population of about 2 million, has now seen 10 coups or attempted coups since independence from Portugal in 1974. Only one democratically elected president has completed a full term.
It remains unclear who was behind the attack, which Embalo said was not only a failed coup but an assassination attempt.
In a video, the president suggested that not all units of the army was involved but that the attackers may have been linked to the drug trade.
Guinea-Bissau is known as a major transit point for Latin American cocaine headed for Europe, contributing to its perpetual instability.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) commission president Jean-Claude Kassi Brou said army was responsible, adding in a Twitter post on Wednesday: “I welcome the failure of the military coup attempt in Guinea-Bissau, which was an attack on democracy and the people.”
The main road linking the city center to the airport remained closed on Wednesday morning since it goes past the presidential palace, but banks and shops had reopened and people were venturing out, a Reuters reporter said.
Six killed in failed coup in Guinea-Bissau
https://arab.news/csrs3
Six killed in failed coup in Guinea-Bissau
- The dead in Tuesday’s incident included four assailants and two members of the presidential guard
Germany’s Merz urges ‘peaceful coexistence’ a year after deadly market attack
- The market attack happened during campaigning for legislative elections — one of several carried out by migrants that fed into a fierce debate about immigration and security in Germany
MAGDEBURG, Germany: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Saturday called for “peaceful coexistence” as the country marked the first anniversary of a deadly car-ramming attack at a Christmas market in eastern Germany.
Merz addressed a church ceremony in the city of Magdeburg, where the December 20, 2024, attack killed six and wounded more than 300 others.
“May we all find, today in this commemoration, comfort and peaceful coexistence, especially as Christmas approaches,” he told those gathered at the Protestant Johanniskirche (St. John’s Church), near the site of the attack.
Germany was still “a country where we show unconditional solidarity — especially when injustice prevails — standing shoulder to shoulder wherever violence erupts,” he added.
While the market reopened on November 20, guarded by armed police and protected by concrete barricades, it remained closed on Saturday out of respect to the victims of last year’s attack.
Saudi man Taleb Jawad Al-Abdulmohsen, 51, is currently on trial for the attack. He has admitted to plowing a rented SUV through the crowd in an attack prosecutors say was inspired by a mix of personal grievances, far-right and anti-Islam views.
Merz’s speech came eight months before regional elections, with the far-right AfD riding high in opinion polls in Saxony-Anhalt state, of which Magdeburg is the capital.
The market attack happened during campaigning for legislative elections — one of several carried out by migrants that fed into a fierce debate about immigration and security in Germany.
On December 13, German police said they had arrested five men suspected of planning a similar vehicle attack on a Christmas market in the southern state of Bavaria.
Police and prosecutors said they had detained an Egyptian, three Moroccans and a Syrian over the alleged plot.
