Streets filled with rubble and ransacked shops greeted residents of some Dakar neighbourhoods on Saturday - fallout from clashes between anti-government protesters and police that have gripped Senegal in recent days.
Most of the capital appeared quiet on Saturday, but tensions were running high after two days of violent unrest in several cities that has killed at least ten people, wreaked untold damage, and alarmed Senegal's neighbours and allies.
Mobs smashed windows and looted at least two gas station shops overnight in Dakar's Ouakam and Ngor districts, while an Auchan supermarket in densely populated Grand Yoff was torched and ransacked. Rubble littered the roads that were scarred black by fires. The government has enlisted the army to back up the many riot police still stationed around the city. Over a dozen soldiers guarded the trashed gas station in Ouakam on Saturday, as some shop owners tentatively opened their doors, although streets were unusually empty.
"We are so scared because you don't know when the crowds will come, and when they come they take ... your goods, they are thieves," he said in his storeroom that was stacked with sacks of food and household items.The unrest is the latest in a string of protests in Senegal, long considered one of West Africa's most stable democracies. They are triggered by anger over court cases against Sonko that could prevent him from running in elections next year.
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