Hundreds of security force members held a rally in Gambia's capital Banjul Saturday in support of President Yahya Jammeh, four days after an attack on the presidential palace, witnesses said.

Several hundred soldiers, police, firemen and ambulance workers marched from the National Assembly to the presidential palace less than a kilometer away, the witnesses told AFP.

At least 19 people aboard a minibus were killed when a landmine exploded in northern Guinea-Bissau, police said Saturday.

Another 10 people were injured, several seriously, in the blast on a little-used route 70 kilometers (40 miles) north of the capital of Bissau, as the vehicle swerved to avoid water in its path, police and witnesses said.

Guinea-Bissau launched a nationwide hygiene drive on Saturday, declaring itself "on alert" after the announcement that the Ebola epidemic ravaging west Africa had spread to neighbouring Senegal.

The campaign will involve the cleaning and disinfection of public places "across the entire country" on the last Saturday of every month, Prime Minister Domingos Simoes Pereira's office said.

Guinea-Bissau is closing its border with Guinea, one of the west African countries hardest hit by the deadly Ebola virus, Prime Minister Domingos Simoes Pereira said Tuesday.

"In light of information provided by the health ministry and after a series of consultations, the government of Guinea-Bissau has decided to close its southern and eastern borders" with Guinea "until further notice," Pereira told a press conference.

Guinea-Bissau's prime minister Domingos Simoes Pereira presented his new government Friday, less than two weeks after the president vowed to fight poverty and bring stability to the impoverished West African nation.

Pereira's 16-minister cabinet is dominated by members of President Jose Mario Vaz's African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), a decree published in the capital Bissau showed.

Guinea-Bissau's former finance minister Jose Mario Vaz scored a resounding victory Tuesday in a presidential election seen as a key test of stability in the coup-prone country.

The candidate of the west African nation's dominant party won an overwhelming 62 percent of the vote against independent rival Nuno Gomes Nabiam, the election commission said.

Guinea-Bissau began electing a new president on Sunday in a key test for a fragile state plagued by powerful cocaine cartels and upended in a military coup two years ago.

Already mired in poverty, the west African nation has been stagnating since 2012 under the rule of a transitional government backed by its all-powerful military, with the economy anaemic and drug trafficking fuelling corruption.

Guinea-Bissau paid its last respects on Friday to Kumba Yala, the philosophy teacher turned president who ruled the west African nation from 2000 to 2003 and died three weeks ago aged 61.

Thousands of political activists, government members, family and friends attended his funeral at a military base in Bissau, many waving banners declaring "eternal glory to Kumba Yala" and "even in death, our president gives us hope".

The people of Guinea-Bissau have voted in large numbers, election officials and analysts said Monday, as the country seeks to turn the page on years of political instability and military violence.

Voters went to the polls on Sunday in the first presidential and parliamentary polls in the west African nation since a military coup in 2012.

Kumba Yala, the colorful figure who held power in the tiny west African nation of Guinea-Bissau from 2000 to 2003 before the army ousted him, died Friday aged 61, his family said.

The former president "had a malaise on Thursday night" and died in the early hours of the morning on Friday, his personal security chief Alfredo Malu, told AFP by telephone.