toppled his government this week, Senegal's authorities have announced. It follows negotiations by the regional West African bloc Ecowas to secure his transfer amid rising tensions in Guinea-Bissau. Senegal's foreign ministry said in a statement that Embaló had landed in the country "safe and sound" on a chartered military flight late on Thursday. The military in Guinea-Bissau has already sworn in a new transitional leader, Gen Horta N'Tam, who will rule the coup-prone country for a year.

Wednesday's coup came a day before authorities were due to announce the provisional results of a presidential and parliamentary election. The military has suspended the electoral process and blocked the release of the results. It said it was acting to thwart a plot by unnamed politicians who had "the support of a well-known drug baron" to destabilise the country, and imposed a night-time curfew. Sandwiched between Senegal and Guinea, the coup-prone country is known as a drug-trafficking hub where the military has been influential since it gained independence from Portugal in 1974.

A mother of three told the BBC it was not the first military takeover she had lived through, nonetheless it had came as a surprise as people were expecting to hear about the outcome of the election, which had an estimated voter turnout of more than 65%. "We heard gunfire. We ran away. We tried to pack our bags to go home," she said. Another resident of the capital, Bissau, said he was unhappy about the situation. "This doesn't help anyone. Because it puts the country into chaos," Mohamed Sylla told the BBC. (BBC)