Women blockade motorway in new Guinea protests

CONAKRY: Women angered by a police crackdown on anti-government demonstrations blockaded a motorway in the Guinean capital on Thursday a day after three people were killed in a fresh round of protests.

About 1,000 women, dressed in red and white, marched down the Le Prince motorway crossing the city, led by Halimatou Dalein Diallo, the wife of Cellou Dalein Diallo, who heads the country’s main opposition party, an AFP reporter saw.

They chanted slogans such as "Stop targeted kilings" and "Down with police barbarity". The opposition Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG) has been staging protests in the capital, Conakry, since losing February 4 local elections it says were rigged.

The demonstrations have met with a crackdown that according to an opposition toll have left around a dozen dead.

A 25-year-old man named Mamadou Saidou Diallo, died overnight from gunshot wounds he received on Wednesday, bringing the day’s fatality toll to three, his family said. The protests have overlapped with a strike by teachers over pay and working conditions, which ended on Wednesday.

The strike paralysed the country’s education system and fractured relations between teachers, parents and the state, while President Alpha Conde has faced criticism for allowing the industrial action to drag on.