BISSAU: Guinea-Bissau’s army denied staging a coup yesterday after soldiers assassinated veteran President Joao Bernardo Vieira in apparent reprisal for a bomb blast which killed the head of the military.

The army pledged to respect “constitutional order” and called on the population to stay calm in the wake of the killings, which were roundly condemned by the international community.

Soldiers gunned Vieira down as he fled his home in the early hours of yesterday following turmoil in which the army chief was killed in a bomb explosion hours before, military officials said.

The West African nation’s army blamed Vieira, 69, for the death of its leader, Gen. Tagme Na Wai, in the bomb attack on Sunday, a military spokesman, naval Commander Zamora Induta, said.

Vieira’s supporters and the army fought in the capital, Bissau, on Sunday and rocket explosions and automatic weapons fire could still be heard in the capital in the early hours of yesterday before the firing subsided.

“We do not accept that people are interpreting this as a coup d’etat,” Induta said after senior army, air force and naval officers met for talks with Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior.He said the army had given the prime minister guarantees that it would remain faithful to democratic principles.

Guinea-Bissau has a history of coups but under the constitution the interim leadership passes to National Assembly speaker, Raim-undo Perreira, who must organize a presidential poll within 60 days.

The army said earlier the situation in the country was “under control” but warned that it would not tolerate “looters and troublemakers.”

Meanwhile, the cabinet announced seven days of national mourning for both leaders and directed the public prosecutor’s office to launch an inquiry into the deaths. Vieira, one of the leaders of Guinea-Bissau’s fight against Portuguese rule, led the impoverished country from 1980 to 1999 and then became president again in 2005 until his death.

While the country has become a notorious transit point for the cocaine trade between South America and Europe, relations between Vieira and the army have been deteriorating for months.

The killings came after weeks of mounting rivalry between the president and the military leadership.

Shortly after parliamentary elections in November, won by Vieira’s party, an attack by soldiers on the office of the president ­— possibly a mutiny or a coup bid — left two people dead.