One person was killed and several injured as police fired tear gas in clashes with protesters in Guinea Sunday at the start of a bitterly-disputed referendum that critics say is a ploy by the president to stay in power. President Alpha Conde, who became the West African country's first democratically elected president in 2010, is proposing a change to the constitution to codify gender equality and introduce other social reforms.
But his opponents fear the real motive is to reset presidential term limits, allowing Conde, 82, to run for a third spell in office later this year - a scenario that his government has not discounted. Shortly after voting began at 0800 GMT, young people attacked police deployed outside a polling station in a school in Ratoma, a suburb of the capital Conakry, according to an AFP reporter and other witnesses. In another school nearby, voting equipment was vandalised.
A 28-year-old man was shot dead and several others wounded in another Conakry suburb, Hamdallaye, the victim's brother confirmed to AFP. Since October, Guineans have protested en masse against the possibility of Conde extending his grip on power.