Concern over Guinea-Bissau military‘coup’

The regional bloc of West African states has condemned what it called an attempted coup in Guinea-Bissau amid reports of soldiers seizing control of a central area of the country’s capital.Witnesses and diplomats in Bissau described explosions and heavy arms fires in Bissau late on Thursday night, with the home of Carlos Gomes Junior, the outgoing prime minister and presidential hopeful in runoff elections scheduled for later this month, coming under attack.“It was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and we were forced to retreat,” said a police officer who had been on guard at Gomes’ residence.Gomes’ wife told the AFP news agency on Friday that her husband had been arrested by troops who attacked his residence the night before.“He was arrested yesterday [Thursday] by some soldiers. They put him into a pickup truck and then sped off to an unknown destination,” Salome Gomes said.A diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press news agency that the whereabouts Raimundo Pereira, the country’s interim president, were unknown.An AFP correspondent reported that the military had taken control of the ruling party headquarters and national radio station, with rocket fire and shots also being heard.“Last night there was a very large presence of the military in the streets,” Peter Thompson, the head of the UK electoral observation mission, told Al Jazeera from Bissau.“It did seem quite co-ordinated last night in terms of how the roads were shut off... Today the streets are very calm, the city is much quieter than it normally would be. People are staying home.“I do know that the army has taken control of the state media and state television, and they haven’t released anything official,” he said.