Police break up demonstration in Guinea,killing one person

Riot police have fired tear gas and live ammunition to disperse an opposition protest in the Guinean capital, Conakry, killing at least one person and injuring at least two others.

Opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo said 700,000 people had joined a 15-kilometre (nine mile) procession from the suburbs to the 28 Septembre stadium in the west African nation’s capital.

The demonstration saw at least half a million people protest against alleged corruption and economic mismanagement by the government of President Alpha Conde.

The 20-year old Thierno Hamidou Diallo was shot in the chest by a police officer “as he was sitting on the balcony of his apartment” in the suburb of Bambeto, his brother Mamadou Dian Diallo said.

“I heard the shot myself but I never imagined it could have been aimed at my brother,” said Diallo, who lost another of his brothers during a political protest in 2013.

An AFP reporter saw the body at the local Mere et Enfant (Mother and Child) hospital before it was transferred to a morgue.

Security minister Abdoul Kabele Camara said that violence had broken out in the late afternoon, leading to a police intervention in which “gunshots caused one serious injury and one fatality”.