FILE - In this Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019 record photo, Guinean President Alpha Conde delivers a code during a ceremonial marking the 75th day of the WWII Allied landings successful Provence, successful Saint-Raphael, confederate France. Witnesses accidental dense gunfire has erupted adjacent the statesmanlike palace successful Guinea's superior and went connected for hours. It was not instantly known whether President Alpha Conde was location astatine the clip the shooting began. But the gunfire prompted information concerns successful the West African state with a agelong past of coup attempts. (Eric Gaillard/Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - In this Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019 record photo, Guinean President Alpha Conde delivers a code during a ceremonial marking the 75th day of the WWII Allied landings successful Provence, successful Saint-Raphael, confederate France. Witnesses accidental dense gunfire has erupted adjacent the statesmanlike palace successful Guinea's superior and went connected for hours. It was not instantly known whether President Alpha Conde was location astatine the clip the shooting began. But the gunfire prompted information concerns successful the West African state with a agelong past of coup attempts. (Eric Gaillard/Pool Photo via AP, File)

CONAKRY – A Guinean service colonel seized power of authorities tv airwaves Sunday and announced that President Alpha Conde's authorities had been dissolved hours aft dense gunfire erupted adjacent the statesmanlike palace.

Conde's whereabouts were not instantly known, and Col. Mamadi Doumbouya made nary notation of the 83-year-old president whose popularity has plummeted since helium sought a 3rd word past year.

“The personalization of governmental beingness is over. We volition nary longer entrust authorities to 1 man, we volition entrust it to the people,” Doumbouya said, adding that the constitution was besides dissolved and onshore borders present closed.

HIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier communicative follows below.

CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) — Heavy gunfire erupted aboriginal Sunday adjacent the statesmanlike palace successful Guinea's superior and went connected for hours, witnesses said, raising information concerns successful a West African federation with a agelong past of subject powerfulness grabs and coup attempts.

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The Defense Ministry aboriginal said the statesmanlike defender and different information forces had “contained the menace and repelled the radical of assailants.”

“Security and sweeping operations are continuing to reconstruct bid and peace,” the connection said.

However, the connection couldn't beryllium independently corroborated and determination was nary contiguous remark from President Alpha Conde. State tv carried euphony and different programming, but made nary notation of the gunfire that had echoed done the Kaloum vicinity of Conakry each morning.

Conde has faced mounting disapproval ever since helium sought a 3rd word successful bureau past year, saying the two-term bounds didn't use to him due to the fact that of a law referendum helium had enactment forth.

He was yet reelected, but the determination prompted convulsive thoroughfare demonstrations successful which the absorption said dozens were killed. Conde, who is 83, present could stay successful powerfulness until 2030 if helium wins again successful 2025.

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He archetypal came to powerfulness successful 2010 successful the country’s archetypal antiauthoritarian predetermination since independency from France successful 1958. Many saw his presidency arsenic a caller commencement for the country, which has been mired by decades of corrupt, authoritarian rule.

Opponents, though, accidental helium has failed to amended the lives of Guineans, astir of whom unrecorded successful poorness contempt the country’s immense mineral riches.

In 2011, helium narrowly survived an assassination effort aft gunmen surrounded his location overnight and pounded his chamber with rockets. Rocket-propelled grenades landed wrong the compound and 1 of his bodyguards was killed.

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Associated Press writer Krista Larson contributed to this study from Dakar, Senegal.

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