French media: Gabon leader dead !!

A French news website has reported that Omar Bongo Ondimba, the president of Gabon and Africa's longest serving leader, has died at the age of 73.

Government officials in the west African nation denied French media reports of the president's death and there was no official confirmation on Monday, either from Gabon or France.

Bongo's death was reported on the website of French weekly newspaper Le Point.

But Jean Eyeghe Ndong, Gabon's prime minister, said that he had no news regarding the reported death.

"If such a situation happens, I think and I know that the family of President Bongo would naturally inform me. This is not the case at the moment I am talking to you," Ndong told Gabonese television on Sunday.

Separately, a Spanish diplomatic source also denied reports of Bongo's death.

President hospitalised

Bongo was hospitalised in Spain late last month, amid reports that he was ill with cancer.

Miguel Angel Moratinos, Spain's foreign minister, said then that Bongo had been admitted "for medical treatment" at a clinic in Barcelona.

Sources close to the president in Libreville, Gabon's capital, had said only that Bongo had undergone an operation and was "better" following the May procedure.

Bongo ruled the former French colony of Gabon for 41 years, in a reign overshadowed by corruption allegations, which he denied.

Last month, a French judge said that an investigation was under way into Bongo's financial activities in France, as well those of Denis Sassou Nguesso and Teodoro Obiang Nguema, his respective counterparts from Congo-Brazzaville and Equatorial Guinea.

Transparency International, the corruption watchdog, said that the leaders embezzled millions of dollars of public money to fund a lavish lifestyle.

All three leaders denied the claims.