(Bloomberg) -- Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, who emerged unscathed from an attempted coup after being under fire for five hours, said the attackers who tried to kill him and his cabinet were linked to drug smuggling.
“Some individuals involved in this cowardly and barbaric act were already being investigated for drug trafficking,” said Embalo, who has vowed to fight the illegal narcotics trade and corruption since coming to power in 2020. The attackers “did not just want to carry out a coup, but also to kill the president, the prime minister and the ministers,” he said at a media briefing broadcast on his Facebook page.
Guinea-Bissau, one of the world's poorest nations, has been identified by the United Nations as a hub for Latin American gangs smuggling Colombian cocaine into Europe. The country has had several coups and other forms of political unrest since the 1980s, including the assassination of President Joao Bernardo Vieira in 2009.
About $1 billion worth of cocaine transited through West Africa on its way to Europe in 2016, according to an estimate from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Guinea-Bissau's dozens of unpatrolled and uninhabited islands along the coast of West Africa are seen as an ideal place for disembarking and stockpiling large amounts of drugs.
The latest coup attempt began when gunfire erupted outside government buildings in the capital, Bissau, where the president and the prime minister were attending a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. While no ministers were wounded, “there are dead, many dead, on both sides,” said Embalo.
“Some brave children have fallen because of the ambition of two or three people,” said Embalo, adding that the fatalities are mostly within the security forces. “The situation is now under control.”
The unrest came a week after the military overthrew the government of Burkina Faso -- West Africa's third coup in less than a year.
READ: Burkina Faso Coup Fallout to Reverberate Across West Africa
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