Unidentified gunmen attacked a military barracks in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown early on Sunday morning (November 26), raising fears of a breakdown of order in the country and a wider conflict within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) after coups in Mali, Niger, and Gabon in recent months.
Bio later posted a statement on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that the assailants were driven back by security forces and that "calm has been restored."
Nevertheless, he declared a nationwide curfew and encouraged people to stay indoors, Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, a senior US official told Reuters, on the condition of anonymity, that the central prison in Freetown - which housed inmates way above its maximum capacity - was also opened and that some inmates had escaped.
Both ECOWAS and the US embassy in Freetown condemned the attacks as unjustifiable.
Factors Leading to the Attack
Aside from the coups in fellow ECOWAS nations, one factor that could be considered was Bio's reelection as president for a second term in June in a disputed vote in which the main opposition accused Sierra Leone's electoral commission of conspiring with his party to rig the results.
June's elections were only the fifth since the end of a brutal 11-year civil war over two decades ago, which left tens of thousands dead and crashed the country's economy - an issue Bio was still being criticized to this day.
Almost 60% of Sierra Leone's over seven million population is facing poverty, with youth underemployment being one of the highest in West Africa.
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