Fighting underway for second day

Artillery shells continued to rain on rebel positions for a second successive day in Bissau today (Monday), threatening to plunge the country back into full-scale civil war, news reports said. Yesterday’s (Sunday) fighting started in the city’s Bissaque/Ponte de Sibe zone where some Togolese ECOMOG units are deployed, the Portuguese news agency Lusa reported. So far, it remains unclear who started this round of fighting which marked the first major violent incident since a peace accord on 1 November 1998 between rival government and military junta forces, the reports said. The fighting comes as more troops of the West African intervention force (ECOMOG) are about to deploy in the Guinea Bissau capital. Delegations from the government, the junta and the Economic Community of West African states (ECOWAS) reached a draft agreement on Friday on the arrival of additional ECOMOG troops and a timetable for the withdrawal of Guinean and Senegalese soldiers. The withdrawal of these troops and the arrival of ECOMOG is envisaged under the peace agreement.