Guinean forces kill 128 in crackdown

Guinean security forces killed at least 58 people when they fired live rounds on Monday to disperse thousands of protesters who wanted to hold a rally in a sports stadium, a rights body said.

Witnesses said several prominent opposition leaders were arrested and protesters were injured in violence that began when thousands of people took to the streets and met in the stadium despite a massive security operation by authorities.

The violence in the world's top bauxite exporting country, the worst since military ruler Captain Moussa Dadis Camara seized power in a 2008 coup, followed months of wrangling between Camara and his rivals.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and former colonial power France condemned the violence.

Camara has not ruled out standing in elections, angering opponents and foreign donors alike.

"At one hospital alone, we have counted 58 bodies," Thierno Maadjou Sow, president of the Guinean Human Rights Organization, told Reuters. "It seems there are many more corpses in (the other hospital)."

A witness who went to the local Red Cross in Conakry said he had counted at least 20 people with bullet wounds. Other witnesses said a police station was set on fire and several police vehicles, equipment and at least one officer were seized.

The junta, known as the National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD), said it would not negotiate with forces challenging it.

"Those who want to defy the authority of the state, we will stop them," Commandant Moussa Diegboro Camara said on the radio.

He has yet to make a formal announcement, but Dadis Camara has told diplomats in private he will be a candidate.

A loose coalition of opposition parties is leading the campaign against his candidacy and wanted to hold a meeting at the September 28 stadium. It was banned but thousands of people took to the streets and broke into the stadium anyway.

Cellou Dalein Diallo, leader of major opposition group the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG), and several other politicians were arrested by the security forces.

"I asked ... whether they were in good health, and I was told they are," Dadis Camara told Senegalese radio station RFM.

At least 87 people have been killed after troops in Guinea opened fire on a huge opposition rally in the capital Conakry, reports say.

An earlier death toll of 58 rose by nearly 30 late on Monday, according to unnamed police sources.

Some 50,000 people rallied against Capt Moussa Dadis Camara who seized power in Guinea in a bloodless coup last year.

The rally was triggered by indications he is to reverse a pledge not to run in a presidential vote set for January.