Nine killed as Guinea soldiers fire on student protesters

CONAKRY - At least nine people were killed and more than a dozen wounded when soldiers opened fire on student protesters in Guinea today, police and witnesses said, as a general strike gripped the poor West African country.

President Lansana Conte's government blamed the opposition for stirring violence during the student protests against the suspension of exams due today in the former French colony.

The general strike, which began last week, is the latest action by unions leading opposition to Conte's ruinous economic record in mineral-rich Guinea.

Once a bulwark of stability in West Africa, Guinea is struggling with rampant corruption, a collapsing economy and a powerful but fractious military.

"A lack of control resulted in the loss of life and important material damage both in (the capital) Conakry and in certain towns in the interior," government spokesman Moussa Solano told state media, without providing further details.

"Certain political parties worked to manipulate rioters within the student ranks."

Three people were killed in Conakry, including a child hit by a stray bullet, when a soldier opened fire after being mobbed by angry students, a police source said.

A witness in the northern town of Labe, some 430 km from Conakry, saw the corpses of three demonstrators shot dead by soldiers, in a second day of violent student protests.

Three people were killed in the eastern town of Nzerekore, about 970 km southeast of Conakry, where a riot erupted after pupils taunted police when it became clear adjudicators for the exams had heeded the strike call.

"Soldiers opened fire on a group of students who were marching on the governor's residence. Two people died there and a third student was killed at the Oumar Drame primary school," said a Nzerekore resident, who asked not to be identified.

In an opposition suburb of Conakry, students shouting "Down with the government" ransacked education offices and rampaged through the streets despite police efforts to contain them.

Union leaders at the Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee (CBG) -- the world's largest producer of the ore used to make aluminium -- decided last week not to follow the strike call due to the strategic importance of their sector. CBG is controlled by Alcan and Alcoa.

Conte held an emergency meeting with union leaders today, a presidential source said, but the outcome was not immediately clear.

Analysts fear a dangerous power vacuum if Conte -- a diabetic in his 70s -- were to die. In a cabinet reshuffle last month, he promoted long-term allies from his own ethnic group.

"Guinea is increasingly unstable. The reshuffle showed the government ... is not interested in reform or meeting civil society's insistent calls for change," said Richard Reeve, West African expert at the London-based Chatham House think-tank.

In Conakry, government offices and businesses were closed as the five-day-old strike deepened.

The unions have demanded the government reverse a 30 per cent increase in fuel prices announced in mid-May, which they said obliterated wage increases set a month earlier. A litre of petrol costs 5,500 Guinean francs ($1.20) in a country where more than half the population lives on less than $1 a day.

- REUTERS