Gabon soldiers seize power

DAKAR, Aug 30 (AP/AFP): Mutinous soldiers in Gabon said Wednesday they were overturning the results of a presidential election that was to extend the Bongo family's 55-year hold on power.
The central African country's election committee announced that President Ali Bongo Ondimba, 64, had won the election with 64% of the vote early Wednesday morning. Within minutes, gunfire was heard in the center of the capital, Libreville.
A dozen uniformed soldiers appeared on state television later the same morning and announced that they had seized power.
The soldiers intended to "dissolve all institutions of the republic," said a spokesman for the group, whose members were drawn from the gendarme, the republican guard and other elements of the security forces.
Meanwhile, Gabon's President Ali Bongo has appeared in a video calling for his "friends" to "make noise" after military officers in the oil-rich central African state staged a coup.
"I'm sending a message to all friends that we have all over the world to tell them to make noise for (...) the people here who arrested me and my family," he said, looking worried, in the clip posted on social media. AFP was not able to determine where or when the video was captured.
The coup attempt came about one month after mutinous soldiers in Niger seized power from the democratically elected government, and is the latest in a series of coups that have challenged governments with ties to France, the region's former colonizer.
Unlike Niger and two other West African countries run by military juntas, Gabon hasn't been wracked by jihadi violence and had been seen as relatively stable.
In his annual Independence Day speech Aug. 17, Bongo said "While our continent has been shaken in recent weeks by violent crises, rest assured that I will never allow you and our country Gabon to be hostages to attempts at destabilization. Never."
At a time when anti-France sentiment is spreading in many former colonies, the French-educated Bongo met President Emmanuel Macron in Paris in late June and shared photos of them shaking hands.
The coup's leaders vowed to respect "Gabon's commitments to the national and international community."