CONAKRY: At least 16 people have been burned alive or hacked to death with machetes, and dozens wounded, during two days of ethnic clashes in the west African state of Guinea, officials said on Tuesday.
The violence broke out in the southern forest region early Monday when petrol station guards from the Guerze tribe in the town of Koule beat to death an ethnic Konianke youth they had accused of stealing.
Fighting quickly spread to the nearby provincial capital N'Zerekore, 570 kilometres (350 miles) southeast of Conakry, leaving several homes destroyed.
"The violence recorded since Monday in Koule, and then in N'Zerekore, has left 16 people dead and some 80 wounded," said government spokesman, Albert Damatang Camara.
He said security forces had been deployed "en masse" and calm was beginning to return to the streets.
But a state radio correspondent in N'Zerekore said it was unlikely that an accurate death toll would be established as the bodies of many attacked by machetes had not been sent to hospital.
"Some were burned alive while others were cut with machetes. We are not able to manage. This situation is beyond us," Francois Lamah, a doctor from N'Zerekore, told AFP.
Security forces had been deployed to break up the fighting on Monday but were initially unable to quell the violence despite a curfew imposed by N'Zerekore prefect Aboubacar Mbop Camara, who appealed for reinforcements.
A security source said the government had dispatched two of its top army colonels -- the director of the national organised crime agency and the head of President Alpha Conde's security -- to restore order.
The men come from the region and are members of the two opposing tribes.
A number of witnesses told AFP Guerzes and Koniankes had been attacking one another with machetes, axes, sticks, stones and firearms, setting fire to houses and cars.
Guerze chief Molou Holamou Azaly Zogbelemou was among those wounded and taken to hospital, Camara told AFP.
"The Konianke protesters also set fire to his home and his car," he added.
Communal violence is common in the region, near the border with Liberia, where clashes between the two tribes regularly break out over religious and other grievances.
The indigenous Guerze are mostly Christian or animist, while the Konianke -- seen as newcomers -- are Muslims considered to be close to Liberia's Mandingo ethnic community.
In Liberia's civil war, which ended in 2003, rebels fighting the forces of then president Charles Taylor drew much of their support from the Mandingo community.
The Guerze, known as Kpelle in Liberia, were generally considered to be supporters of forces loyal to Taylor, who was jailed last year for "aiding and abetting" war crimes in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
"We're going to be done this time with the Konianke who invaded us and beat and burned the home of the patriarch of the town and Guerze spiritual guide Azaly Zogbelemou," a resident of N'Zerekore told AFP.
"It will be worse than 1991," he added.
That year clashes between the two communities left more than 200 dead.
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