Gabon opposition says HQ attacked by presidential guard

Gabonese Presidential Guard forces stormed the headquarters of opposition candidate Jean Ping early on 1 September as violence flared following the declaration on 31 August of a narrow election victory for incumbent president Ali Bongo.

“They attacked around 01:00”. It is the Republican Guard. Its elements have carried out a bombing by helicopters and then they attacked on the ground. Ping said two people were killed and 19 injured.

Ali Bongo was declared the victor in the tightly contested race but the Opposition led by Jean Ping termed the results as “fraudulent”.

The European Union and France have called for a transparent verification of the election results.

Mr Ping won in six out of nine provinces but disputes the result in Mr Bongo’s home province of Haut-Ogooue, where turnout was 99.93% and 95% of votes were for the president.

Mr Ping has called for voting figures from each polling station to made public.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said earlier that the global body supported Gabonese calls for a verification of the election results, and called for the immediate release of political detainees.

A spokesman for the government said the security forces raided the opposition building in search of people who had set fires near the parliament building earlier in the night.

President Ali Bongo Ondimba received 49.8 percent of the vote, compared with 48.2 percent for his rival, Jean Ping, who is the former chairman of the African Union. “Part of the building is on fire”, said another witness, who asked not to be named out of fear of reprisal.

The European Union and Western countries, including the U.S. and France, have also urged calm and called on authorities in the former French colony to show more transparency about the election results. He called for global assistance to protect the 1.8 million population of the oil-producing state.

Before the attack on the opposition headquarters, police fired tear gas at hundreds of opposition demonstrators in the capital, Libreville, who responded by setting fire to cars and debris in front of the National Assembly. After the results were announced late Tuesday, he said the electoral commission’s official tally is trustworthy.

Some 1,000 people were arrested in Gabon after a rash of post-election violence, the country’s interior minister said on Thursday.

Bongo, 57, campaigned under the slogan “Let’s change together”, playing up the roads and hospitals built during his first term and stressing the need to break with the bad old days of disappearing public funds and suspect management of oil revenues.