Heavy gunfire erupted outside Guinea-Bissau’s presidential palace on Wednesday, just three days after the country conducted its presidential and legislative elections. Witnesses reported chaos as people and vehicles fled the area, highlighting the fragile security situation in the West African nation.
Both leading candidates in the elections—incumbent Umaro Sissoco Embalo and opposition figure Fernando Dias—have claimed victory, further intensifying political tensions. Official provisional results are expected on Thursday.
A passerby fleeing the scene told AFP journalists: “We’re used to it in Bissau,” reflecting the country’s long history of political unrest. Guinea-Bissau has experienced four coups since independence, along with several attempted takeovers, making electoral disputes highly volatile.
Embalo, widely expected to win, had presided over an election that until Wednesday had been relatively peaceful. Notably, the main opposition party, PAIGC, and its leader Domingos Simoes Pereira were excluded from the ballot after the Supreme Court ruled that their application had been submitted too late.
Pereira and Embalo are long-standing political rivals, with the 2019 presidential election plunging the country into a four-month post-election crisis as both claimed victory.
Just a day before the violence, the head of the ECOWAS observation mission, Issifu Baba Braimah Kamara, had commended the “peaceful conduct of the vote,” a stark contrast to the unrest witnessed on Wednesday.
Guinea-Bissau, one of the world’s poorest countries, has also become a key transit hub for drug trafficking between Latin America and Europe, a problem exacerbated by its chronic political instability.
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