21st January, 2015
As many as three people died when a grenade went off at a bar in the Guinean capital Conakry where football fans were celebrating their team’s goal in a 2015 Africa Cup of Nations game against Ivory Coast, police said.
A spokesman for the police, Mamadou Alpha Barry, said “it was an accidental explosion” and that the man who set off the hand grenade had himself been badly injured. The explosion occurred late Tuesday as Guinea opened the scoring in what ended as a 1-1 draw against Ivory Coast.
Barry said “three bodies are at the morgue,” but General Ibrahima Balde, the head of police, said he could “confirm at least one death” and that the casualty reports “varied between one and three.”
“We were celebrating the Guinean goal when we heard a strong explosion in the bar, which was full of people watching the game, because there wasn’t any electricity in the neighbourhood,” a security source said.