Guinea's junta leader underwent a "minor operation" after being shot by a top aide, a spokesman said yesterday, as the alleged assailant claimed to be safe with supporters inside the west African country.
Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara had the surgery in Morocco where he was airlifted last Friday after being hit in the head in an apparent assassination attempt the night before.
"He is very well," his spokesman Idrissa Cherif said in Conakry. "We have spoken on the telephone, there are no problems and his condition is stable."
Cherif added, "It was not a big operation but a minor intervention."
At the same time, the hunted junior officer accused of shooting Camara said in a separate telephone call with AFP he was still at large and "in a safe place".
"I am in Guinea, I am free to move about," Lieutenant Aboubacar Sidiki Diakite said. "I have a fair number of men with me."
Diakite, known as Toumba, refused to discuss the attack on Camara, saying he was waiting "to see how things develop".
In Conakry yesterday, the paramilitary police patrolled the streets of the capital which was calm and busy with shoppers.
One resident, however, said there were crowds because people were stocking up, uncertain about what could happen next.
"Everyone is looking for supplies, that's why there are so many people out, but it's an uneasy calm," said Fatou Binou, who works in a Conakry bank.
The country's interim leader is the defence minister and number three in the junta, General Sekouba Konate, who returned to the country from Libya on Friday night, according to Cherif, as the regime's number two, General Mamadoua 'Toto' Camara, was also receiving medical treatment for undisclosed conditions in Morocco.
As for the junta chief, who came to power a year ago in a bloodless coup following the death of long-time ruler Lansana Conte, questions still remained as to the seriousness of his condition.
Blaise Compaore, president of Burkina Faso who has been acting as a mediator in Guinea's political crisis, said Camara was "in a difficult situation for sure but not a desperate one".
Camara's spokesman downplayed the leader's head wound. "The bullet did not penetrate his head but grazed it," he said, adding that "he is speaking, he is conscious".