Allies Help Guinea-Bissau Take Rebel Post
Troops from Senegal and Guinea helped drive rebels from their barracks stronghold in neighboring Guinea-Bissau’s capital on Saturday, but fighting continued elsewhere in the city, the Senegalese army said.
An army statement said 60 rebels had been killed in the assault on the Bra Barracks in the north of Bissau, the capital, and an unspecified number wounded. One Senegalese soldier was killed and several were wounded, it added.
The rebels, disaffected soldiers led by dismissed armed forces chief of staff Ansumane Mane, took up arms against President Joao Bernardo Vieira on June 7.
The Senegalese statement said the rebels fell back to positions at the former Portuguese colony’s military and commercial airports in Bissau.
“After several hours of fierce fighting, the military complex of Bra, the rebel stronghold, fell to Senegalese soldiers,” the statement said. Diplomats in touch with Bissau by satellite telephone confirmed the fall of Bra Barracks.
Foreign nationals who arrived in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, by sea late Friday said they had been fired on by rebels as they left Bissau. Four ships or boats carrying more than 3,000 evacuees arrived by Saturday.
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