A bomb killed General Na Waie hours before the president was assassinated [AFP]

"President Vieira was killed by the army as he tried to flee his house which was being attacked by a group of soldiers close to the chief of staff Tagme Na Waie early this morning," Zamora Induta, the military spokesman, said on Monday.

General Na Waie was killed late on Sunday in an attack that was followed by rocket explosions and automatic weapon fire in Bissau, the capital.

Induta added that the president was "one of the main people responsible for the death of Tagme [Na Waie]".

Luis Sanca, a security adviser to Carlos Gomes, Guinea-Bissau's prime minister, confirmed the president's death but gave no details.

Weeks of tensions between the president's followers and the  military leadership erupted into clashes in the capital on Sunday.

Chronic instability

Mutinous soldiers in November fired on Vieira's residence in the capital, killing a presidential guard.

The attack, in which one assailant was killed, followed a disputed parliamentary election won by the president's party.

Jean Ping, the chairman of the African Union (AU), on Monday condemned the assassination as a "criminal act".
 
"I was deeply shocked this morning to hear of the assassination of the president of the republic of Guinea-Bissau, Nino Vieira. The AU and myself firmly condemn this criminal act," Ping told the AFP, using Vieira's nickname.

This assassination "is serious notably because it comes at a  time when efforts were under way to bolster peace following the  November election", he said.

Jan Van Maneen, the honorary consular for the UK and the Netherlands in Guinea-Bissau, said the city was peaceful.

"Bissau is absolutely calm. There is no fighting; no shooting," he said on Monday.

"The constitution says if the president is no longer available, the president of the assembly [parliament] will take over as leader for three months and there should be new elections.

"The thing is that we had elections in November, and the new president of the assembly is a very young man with little experience. We are not sure if he is going to respect the constitution."

But he ruled out the possibility of the army seizing power, saying: "The rivalry is now over and maybe it [the assassination] is now the beginning of a new solution."

The army said in a statement it would respect "constitutional order" and called on the population to remain calm.

One of Na Waie's bodyguards, speaking anonymously to the AFP, said the bomb that killed the general was placed under the stairway leading to his office.

Roads closed

The blast triggered the collapse of a large section of the main headquarters building, where the general's office was located.

"He had just reached the first steps when the bomb was triggered. He was mortally injured," the bodyguard said.

Government troops closed down roads around the army building and shut down five private radio stations after the attack.

Guinea-Bissau has lurched from one political crisis to another since independence from Portugal in 1974 and Na Waie's predecessor, General Verissimo Correia Seabra, was shot dead by soldiers in October 2004.

Na Waie served in the military government that overthrew Vieira in the 1990s and had been critical of him since Vieira was voted back to the presidency in 2005.

Analysts say instability has been worsened by the presence of international drug trafficking organisations which use the country as a staging post for smuggling cocaine into Europe.

Recommend this article...

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto: