Three days after elections that both of the major presidential candidates claim to have won, soldiers in Guinea-Bissau have declared they are assuming "total control" of the west African nation.
In a declaration read aloud at the army's headquarters in the capital city of Bissau and shown on state television, military leaders declared that they were suspending Guinea-Bissau's electoral process and closing its borders. They said that they had established "the high military command for the restoration of order," which would govern the nation going forward.
It was unclear who was responsible for the gunfire that was heard earlier on Wednesday close to the presidential palace, interior ministry, and election commission headquarters.

Since Guinea-Bissau obtained independence from Portugal in 1974, there have been several coups and attempted coups; the military takeover being the most recent. According to the World Bank, the average annual income of the 2.2 million-person nation was only $963 (£728) in 2024.
Guinea-Bissau was designated a "narco state" by the UN in 2008 due to its function as a center for the international cocaine trade. Numerous river deltas and the 88 islands of the Bijagós archipelago, which are located between Senegal and Guinea, make up its coastline. According to experts, these natural, discrete drop-off spots were employed by Colombian drug traffickers.
Umaro Sissoco Embaló, the current president, was fighting to become the first to win a second term in office in thirty years.Both he and Fernando Dias, his primary opponent, declared victory in Sunday's first round of voting.
A representative for Embaló asserted earlier on Wednesday that gunmen connected to Dias were firing the bullets. However, a Dias ally accused Embaló of attempting to stage a coup in order to declare an emergency and hold onto power. Neither offered any proof to support their assertions.
On Thursday, the election commission was scheduled to release preliminary results for the parliamentary and presidential elections.
According to Reuters, there were at least nine coups in Guinea-Bissau between the country's independence and Embaló's election in 2020. During his first time in office, Embaló claimed to have survived three coup attempts, the most recent of which occurred in October.

Critics, however, asserted that Embaló had staged the putsch attempts in order to suppress resistance. Embaló said that the hours-long gunfire in Bissau in December 2023 was an attempt at a coup. Since he disbanded the legislature, Guinea-Bissau has not had a functioning legislature.