PM under arrest as military seizes power in new African coup

Soldiers have arrested the prime minister of Guinea-Bissau, hours after an apparent military coup in the African country.

Carlos Gomes jnr’s home was attacked on Thursday night as part of a series of assaults on the capital. It comes just two weeks before he was to take part in a presidential run-off election, in which he was the frontrunner.

Military spokesman Francelino Cunha confirmed Mr Gomes had been detained. The whereabouts of the country’s interim president, Raimundo Pereira, were unknown.

The unrest follows a military coup three weeks ago in nearby Mali, where an interim president was sworn in on Thursday.

According to a statement from an unidentified military commander, the soldiers don’t want to seize power, but instead were trying to halt an invasion by Angolan troops.

Mr Gomes had been expected to win the 29 April run-off after his challenger, Kumba Yala, a former president who was overthrown in a 2003 coup, said he would boycott the vote because of irregularities.

The election was being held after Guinea-Bissau’s president died in January from diabetes-related complications. Military officials said they had thwarted a coup attempt in December, not long before his death.

Fears of another attempt have grown since his funeral, after which power was handed over to Mr Pereira.

The chronically unstable state has been beset by coups since its independence from Portugal in 1974, and its ruler Joao Bernardo “Nino” Vieira was assassinated inside his home in 2009.

In the communique, the unidentified military commander claimed Mr Gomes was going to allow troops from Angola, another former Portuguese colony, to attack military forces in Guinea-Bissau.

Angola sent about 200 troops to Guinea-Bissau in March last year to help reform its armed forces as part of a bilateral military agreement. Their mission has ended, but the contingent is still in the capital, Bissau.

“The military command does not want power but it was forced to act in this way to defend itself from the diplomatic manoeuvres of the Guinea-Bissau government, which aims to annihilate the [country’s] armed forces using foreign military force,” the communique said

Explosions rocked Bissau on Thursday night, according to witnesses. They said shooting started after the state radio station signal went dead. One man said: “There was panic. Women were running. There were rockets being launched, and the soldiers were shooting with guns mounted on their trucks.

“The shooting lasted from 7pm until 9pm [The soldiers] then went from embassy to embassy to make sure the politicians couldn’t seek refuge there.”

Guinea-Bissau has been further destabilised by a growing cocaine trade. Traffickers from Latin America use its archipelago of uninhabited islands to land small, twin-engine planes loaded with drugs, which are then parcelled out and carried north for sale in Europe.