Guinea-Bissau president confirms deadly coup attempt failed

President of Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, has confirmed an attack on the presidential palace while he and other government officials were in a meeting, but says the 5-hour attack failed. Pro-government forces repelled the attempted coup, the president describes as a “failed attack against democracy”.

President Embalo, Prime Minister Nuno Gomes Nabiam and Cabinet ministers came under heavy armed attack from armed men with AK-47 machine guns on Tuesday.

“Our republican defense and security forces were able to stop this evil; it wasn’t just a coup, it was an attempt to kill the president, the prime minister and all the cabinet”, the country’s president said to the nation.

Though the source and cause of the attack are unknown, Mr. Embalo believes it is related to their efforts to combat the trafficking of narcotics in the country.

This is the second coup-related violence in the West African subregion in two weeks and could have been the fifth in Africa’s Sahel region in less than 18 months.

The military successfully deposed Burkina Faso’s democratically elected leader, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, in the region’s most recent coup.

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