Announcing Kouyate's replacement in a presidential decree broadcast on state television, Conte appeared to have the final word in an increasingly vitriolic battle of wills between the rival power blocks the two men head in the West African country.

But within a couple of hours of the broadcast, youths took to the streets in at least two opposition-leaning suburbs in the capital Conakry, throwing stones and burning tyres. Gendarmes fired in the air to disperse them, residents said.

Kouyate had led a consensus government formed following violent riots that shook Guinea early last year in which more than 130 people were killed, most of them unarmed civilians shot by security forces. But his influence waned in recent months.

"Dr Ahmed Tidiane Souare is named prime minister and head of government in replacement of Mr. Lansana Kouyate," a presidential decree read on state television said.

Souare has served in previous Conte governments, including as minister of mines in a country that holds a third of the world's known reserves of bauxite, the raw mineral used to make aluminium.

"There are youths in the street. I can't even get back home. The gendarmes are shooting. They (the youths) have set up barricades and are throwing stones," Aboubacar Diallo told Reuters from Conakry's Matoto suburb, where Kouyate has a private home, late on Tuesday evening.

Youths burned tyres in another suburb, Sig, residents said.

Union leaders could not be reached for comment, and it was not clear how they would react to Kouyate's shock dismissal.

TURBULENT TIMES

From early on in his premiership, Kouyate's camp clashed often with the tight group of close advisers serving Conte, a chain-smoking diabetic who seized power in a 1984 military coup.

In the early days, the unions whose general strike against Conte's rule had forced Kouyate's appointment stood close by their champion, but their enthusiasm petered out as months went by with little to show for their campaign.

Families and supporters of the 137 people officially recorded as having been killed during the general strike became increasingly bitter as a domestic inquiry into the violence dragged on. Conte refused to allow an international probe.

Sporadic unrest has broken out as Guinea's poor majority have faced continued double-digit inflation -- a key factor in previous protests -- as surging global food and fuel costs have stymied government efforts to control price rises.

Just over a week ago, a parliamentary report called into question Kouyate's financial management, saying there had been "wastage" in the spending of the first $25 million tranche of a revolving $150 million line of credit from a French bank intended to help the national power company improve operations.

"We have said from the start that a change of government didn't interest us. So long as the system stays the same, there will be no change in Guinea," Mohame Diane, executive secretary of the Guinean People's Rally, the main opposition party, told Reuters on Tuesday after Kouyate's dismissal. (Writing by Pascal Fletcher and Alistair Thomson)

                                               Reuter