Daily Times

Guinea’s ruling junta has denied that its forces had shot dead two teenagers at opposition protests earlier in the week. “The rumours about shots fired from the presidential motorcade are false and unfounded,” Amara Camara, a junta spokesman, said in a statement released late on Friday. On Wednesday, an opposition alliance, relatives and neighbours said that security forces in Guinea’s capital had shot dead two teens as their convoy drove through the capital Conakry during protests against the junta.

The National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC), which called for protests, accused junta leader Mamady Doumbouya’s forces of killing the pair — aged 17 and 19. Ibrahima Balde was killed by a projectile fired by a member of the security forces in Wanidara, a suburb of Conakry that has been the scene of clashes, his father Mohamed Cherif told AFP. A relative of the young man, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was hit by a soldier’s bullet as the junta leader’s motorcade passed through the neighbourhood.

Oumar Barry, a 17-year-old secondary school student, died later in nearby Koloma district. “They shot him in the stomach in Koloma,” said his neighbour, Pathe Diallo. Demonstrators in a flashpoint suburb of Conakry had hurled stones at police and security forces who retaliated with teargas, an AFP reporter saw. Police were heavily deployed around the city, and in many districts, markets and shops were subsequently closed.

The FNDC is a coalition of political parties, trade unions and civil society organisations. The poor but mineral-rich state has been ruled by the military since a coup last September that ousted President Alpha Conde, in power since 2010. In May, the junta banned all protests and on August 6 decreed the dissolution of the FNDC.

The alliance staged rallies on July 28 and 29 in which five people were killed and called for peaceful demonstrations for August 17.