Conakry - Guinea junta troops shot and killed at least 128 people and raped women when they broke up a huge demonstration, opposition leaders said on Tuesday amid deadly new unrest.
Soldiers shot dead a youth in Conakry on Tuesday and gunfire rang out across the capital, witnesses said. Soldiers were again attacking people and raping women in their homes, rights groups said.
The United Nations, African Union and European Union all expressed alarm over the killings among tens of thousands of people who attended the rally against junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara.
But much of Conakry remained closed on Tuesday, with inhabitants stunned by the clampdown in the September 28 stadium.
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| 'They were raping women publicly' |
The opposition Union of Republican Forces said that 128 dead were taken to two Conakry hospitals after the shootings on Monday. The party and other sources have accused junta forces of collecting bodies in a bid to hide "the scale of the massacre".
The party's leader, Sydia Toure, was one of two former prime ministers injured at the demonstration and later taken into custody. Toure told AFP that the shootings were "a deliberate attempt" to eliminate the opposition.
Mamadi Kaba, head of the Guinean branch of the African Encounter for the Defence of Human Rights (RADDHO), said the rapes of women started in the stadium.
"The military raped women" at the stadium and later at army barracks, police posts and other parts of Conakry, Kaba said, adding that there were reports of new rape attacks by soldiers on Tuesday.
Opposition activist, Mouctar Diallo, said he saw soldiers putting their rifle into the vaginas of naked women.
| 'Soldiers were shooting everywhere and I saw people fall. They were live bullets' |
"I saw this myself," he told French radio station RFI.
"They were raping women publicly," Diallo added.
"Soldiers were shooting everywhere and I saw people fall. They were live bullets."
An AFP journalist saw at least 10 bodies with bullet wounds inside the stadium and three badly injured people laid out in front of a police post near the stadium. One had his leg broken in two places.
The journalist, Mouctar Bah, said he was forced to kneel on the ground by a soldier from the presidential guard. His microphone and tape recorder were seized and broken by soldiers.
A Red Cross source said military commanders ordered all bodies at the stadium to be taken to the Alpha Yaya Diallo military camp, the junta headquarters, rather than to morgues.
A source at Conakry's Ignace Deen hospital told AFP an army truck took away "dozens of bodies" after the violent clampdown on the banned demonstration.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon slammed the "excessive use of force" and said he was "shocked by the loss of life, the high number of people injured and the destruction of property."
The African Union said in a statement that it "strongly condemns the indiscriminate firing on unarmed civilians, which left dozens dead and many others injured, while serious other violations of human rights were committed."
In Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana also deplored the "high number of victims" and called for the immediate release of the arrested opposition leaders.
Former colonial ruler France also condemned "the violent repression" while a senior US official in Washington said: "We're deeply concerned about the general breakdown in security in Conakry."
The protesters had gathered to oppose any bid by the junta leader, who took power in December 2008, to run for president in an election due in January. Camara also faces strong international pressure to step down.
Camara took over the west African nation after leading a bloodless coup within hours of the death of Guinea's strongman leader Lansana Conte, who had been in power since 1984.
In his first public comment on the violence, Camara told Senegal's RFM radio station that "I wanted to go (and see what was happening), I was so really disgusted when I was told" about the violence.
"I'd rather die (than see people killed) because I didn't take control of this country to have a confrontation," Camara said. - AFP
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