Guinean president escapes armed attack on home

Report says Guinea's President, Alpha Conde escaped a sustained rocket and gunfire attack by unknown assailants on his residence on Tuesday.

The attack was reported to have left one person dead and his home riddled with bullet holes while the president was safe.

"The president was there, but he is safe and sound," said the presidency source.

Eyewitness account

Eyewitnesses said the attack took place at Conde's personal residence in the Kipe suburb of the capital Conakry at around 1.30 a.m. local time and lasted over an hour.

"The kitchen is covered in blood and part of the building is riddled with bullet holes," said one witness who declined to be identified, saying the main gate had been blown out with a rocket-launcher.

It was not clear who was behind the attack on Conde, who came to power last December in an election aimed at drawing a line under decades of coups in the West African nation whose iron and bauxite resources have attracted world mining majors.

Neither the presidential source nor a second source close to the presidency said they had any information at this stage on who the attackers were.

There was no information on the identity of the person killed in the attack.

Security alert increased

Soldiers erected roadblocks throughout the city after the attack, carrying out checks on all vehicles on the road.

Army pick-up trucks full of soldiers patrolled the streets, but only a few residents ventured out of their homes.

Guinea has a long history of authoritarian rule and its security forces have a reputation for brutality against dissidents as well as indiscipline.

However, observers say there has been a marked improvement in army discipline since Conde came to power.

He has put in place a new army leadership and appointed himself defence minister to try to drive security reform.

Former junta leader, Moussa Dadis Camara, whose security forces killed more than 150 opposition demonstrators in a September 2009 attack, is in exile in Burkina Faso after being wounded in an assassination attempt.

A close former aide to Camara, Colonel Moussa Keita, was arrested on July 1 after he accused Sekouba Konate, the army official who engineered the transition back to civilian power, of having defrauded 22 million dollars from the state.

The 2009 election was marked by ethnic tensions between rival groups linked to Conde and his main challenger, Cellou Dalein Diallo, whose Peul ethnic group accounts for around 40 percent of the population.

While Diallo conceded defeat, political tensions have simmered, with Diallo's UFDG opposing Conde's plans to carry out an electoral census and revamp the voter roll before a parliamentary election, which Conde proposed to hold by year-end.

The UFDG agitated that the census be carried out by an independent electoral body rather than the government.

REUTERS/Shakira/Williams