Guinea - after the massacre

Three reported dead Tuesday, national mourning starts

Article published on the 2009-09-30 Latest update 2009-09-30 11:56 TU

Police make an arrest during Monday's rally
(Photo: AFP)

Eyewitnesses in Conakry say Guinean soldiers killed at least three young people in the city on Tuesday. Military ruler Moussa Dadis Camara has declared Wednesday and Thursday days of mourning for the demonstrators killed at an opposition rally Monday.

Several local people say they saw soldiers shoot three youths dead in the northern outskirts of the capital and that one was an adolescent shot in the back.

Shopkeepers accuse members of the presidential guard of looting shops in the Cosa district.

Three opposition leaders say that they were wounded, arrested and questioned. One of them, Cellou Dalein Diallo, claims to have been beaten while in detention.

"The red berets [members of airborne batallions] who beat me up meant to kill me and they said very clearly that they would exterminate me and that I wouldn't talk to RFI any more," Diallo says.

Former Prime Minister François Fall joined calls for a case to be taken to the International Court of Human Rights, while opposition spokesperson Alpha Condé called for a provisional government to take over from military rule.

President Moussa Dadis Camara declared Wednesday and Thursday days of mourning and banned all public assembly.

Camara, who visited the injured in hospital on Tuesday, promised that troublemakers and those responsible for the violence will be severely punished.

"To say that I control this army would be demagogy," he told French  television channel Europe 1. But he also blamed the opposition for the outbreak of violence.

In neighbouring Mali, the country's largest party, the Alliance for Democracy, called on the military govenrment to go. Mali's ambassador is reported to have been molested by troops and robbed on Monday evening.