(Bloomberg) — Automatic gunfire erupted in Guinea-Bissau’s capital on Tuesday as President Umaro Sissoco Embalo met with members of his government, Radio France Internationale reported.
The shooting interrupted the meeting and led to a stampede in the city of Bissau, the broadcaster said on its website. Armed cordons have been placed around some official buildings and schools have been closed, it said.
Embalo, 49, has been in power in the lusophone West African nation since winning a disputed presidential election in December 2019. He succeeded President Jose Mario Vaz, who was the country’s first head of state in two decades to complete his term.
The unrest comes a week after the military overthrew the government of Burkina Faso, the third coup in West Africa in less than a year.
READ: Burkina Faso Coup Fallout to Reverberate Across West Africa
Guinea-Bissau has been a transit hub since the mid-2000s for drugs bound for Europe, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. After small, twin-engine planes make the 3,000-kilometer (1,864-mile) Atlantic crossing from Latin America to a smattering of uninhabited islands off the coast, their cargo moves further north through Mali and Niger infiltrated by militants taking advantage of the lack of state control. Smugglers also transfer drugs into small boats from cargo ships.
About $1 billion worth of cocaine transited through West Africa on its way to Europe in 2016, according to an estimate from the UNODC.
(Adds details on Guinea-Bissau from third paragraph)
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