Dakar: The death toll in Senegal's anti-government protests has risen to 15, police said on Saturday, as authorities in the capital Dakar began clearing debris and securing looted shops after two days of unrest.
The majority of Dakar appeared calm on Saturday, but tensions remained high after violent protests in several cities killed six people on Friday, bringing the total number of people killed this week to 15, according to a police spokesperson.
The death toll has now surpassed the number of people killed in multi-day protests in 2021, when supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko first took to the streets to protest a politically motivated rape trial.
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Sonko's sentencing on Thursday, which could prevent him from running in the presidential election in February, sparked the latest upheaval as protesters heeded his call to defy authorities.
At least two petrol station shops in Dakar's Ouakam and Ngor districts were smashed and looted, while a supermarket in the densely populated Grand Yoff district was torched and ransacked. Roads scarred black by fires were littered with rubble.
"The cops couldn't do anything because there were so many of them." "The police were forced to leave after several attempts to control the crowd with tear gas grenades," said Khadija, a resident near the supermarket, whose interior was gutted and strewn with broken shelves, mud and trash.
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The government has enlisted the army to assist the many riot police officers who remain stationed throughout the city. On Saturday, a dozen soldiers guarded the wrecked petrol station in Ouakam, while some shop owners cautiously opened their doors, despite the fact that the streets were unusually quiet.
The owner of a nearby corner shop, Abdou Ndiaye, said he had closed early the previous two days and opened late on Saturday, fearful of the unrest, which he described as the worst he'd seen in his 15 years of business.
"We are so afraid because you never know when the crowds will arrive, and when they arrive, they take... your goods, they are thieves," he said in a storeroom piled high with sacks of food and household items.
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"There are people who demonstrate, but there are others who do whatever they want."
The unrest is the latest in a series of opposition protests in Senegal, which has long been regarded as one of West Africa's most stable democracies, sparked by Sonko's court case as well as fears that President Macky Sall will try to circumvent the two-term limit and run again in February elections.
