Attacks on Guinea border

Guinea blames rebel attacks on neighbouring countries

By Alhassan Sillah in Conakry

The authorities in Guinea say rebels have carried out new attacks near the southern border with Sierra Leone.

Reliable security sources confirmed that a very large number of rebels attacked Yagouya and Soumbazaya villages in the Kindia region at 3.a.m. on Monday morning.

The sources quoted an elderly citizen in the village of Yagouya as saying that one person was killed, before the rebels abducted everyone who was in the village at the time.

However, the assailants reportedly encountered stiffer resistance from Guinean troops in Soumbazaya.

The fighting there is said to have continued until late morning before the assailants were driven back.

There are no immediate reports of civilian or military casualty figures.

Significant timing

The timing of the rebels' onslaught appears to have been deliberate ,as it coincides with the arrival of a high level Ecowas military team in the forest region of Guinea, to prepare the grounds for a possible deployment of an Ecowas observer mission along the borders between Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

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The eight-man team of senior Nigerian and Malian officers is presently in the Macenta region near Guinea's border with Liberia.

Later the officers are due to go onto the Sierra Leone side of the borders, from where Guinean security sources say today's attacks were launched.