Election protesters may be shot, Gabon says

"No disorder will be tolerated," Gabon's President Omar Bongo said.

• Police stop election protests

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LIBREVILLE, Gabon (Reuters) -- Gabon's government banned demonstrations Saturday and said security forces would shoot without warning to break up any protests against President Omar Bongo's re-election.

Extra troops were deployed in the capital, Libreville, after rioting Thursday by supporters of two leading opposition candidates who say last Sunday's presidential election was rigged to give Bongo a new seven-year term.

"Marches are banned anywhere on national territory until further notice," Interior Minister Clotaire Ivala said in a statement.

"The head of the national police, the head of the gendarmerie (military police) and the head of the Gabonese armed forces are charged with carrying out these measures," he said.

The two main defeated candidates in the polls, Pierre Mamboundou and Zacharie Myboto, have rejected the results and called on people not to go to work from Monday in protest.

"We call on the Gabonese people to rise up and march peacefully to drive their destiny towards the final victory," Mamboundou said.

Prime Minister Jean-Francois Ntoutoume Emane said the government had given the security forces permission to shoot without warning after unrest in Libreville and other towns left at least one person dead.

Bongo, Africa's longest-serving leader, demanded an end to protests Friday in an address on state television, his first public comments since he won the November 27 election.

"Now that the election is successfully over things must resume their normal course. ... In short, no disorder will be tolerated," Bongo said.

"I ask you compatriots not to create pointless tensions. You must stop all declarations that divide the Gabonese people and that lead to acts of violence and looting," he said.

Convoys of military vehicles appeared at junctions in the city Friday night. The streets were quiet Saturday as many people stayed home.

The Union of the Gabonese People, or UPG, opposition party said five people were killed by security forces since the formal announcement Tuesday that Bongo, who has ruled the oil-producing state since 1967, won 79.2 percent of the vote.

"Two young people were killed in Libreville on Thursday ... and we counted two other dead on Wednesday after the results were announced then another one killed by the security forces on the expressway," said Simplice Ibouanga, a senior UPG official.

"They fired without warning on young people who were demonstrating," he told Reuters.

The security forces detained 23 people after Thursday's unrest in the capital, when protesters smashed cars and shop windows before they were dispersed by riot police with batons.

The security forces said one person had been killed and several injured in the Rio suburb of Libreville, a city of luxurious oceanfront hotels and shabby, pot-holed streets.

International observers said the polls went smoothly and did not report any fraud, but Mamboundou and Myboto say they were riddled with irregularities, including ballot-stuffing and votes cast in the names of dead people.

Mamboundou, who came second in the previous presidential election in 1998, finished well behind Bongo in Sunday's poll with 13.6 percent of the vote, according to official results.

Myboto, a former minister and Bongo ally, won 6.6 percent.