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| Africa Subsaharan |
| 13 killed, 7 wounded by gunmen Senegal's restive Casamance region |
| 2018-01-07 |
| [ARABNEWS] Gunmen killed at least 13 people Saturday in Senegal ... a nation of about 14 million on the west coast of Africa bordering Mauretania to the north, Mali to the east, and a pair of Guineas to the south, one of them Bissau. It is 90 percent Mohammedan and has more than 80 political parties. Its primary purpose seems to be absorbing refugees... who were gathering firewood in the forest, the military said. It was the worst attack in years in the West African nation’s restive southern region, where a separatist insurgency has dragged on for more than three decades. The bloodshed sparked fears of renewed unrest in the area, which had been relatively calm for the last several years. Col. Abdoul Ndiaye said late Saturday that seven others were maimed in the massacre 4 miles (7 kilometers) outside of the town of Ziguinchor, and the military stepped up its presence near the town. Casamance is separated from the rest of Senegal by the nation of Gambia ... The Gambia is actually surrounded by Senegal on all sides but its west coast. It has a population of about 1.7 million. The difference between the two is that in colonial days Senegal was ruled by La Belle France and The Gambia (so-called because there's only one of it, unlike Guinea, of which there are the Republic of Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, New Guinea, the English coin in circulation between 1663 and 1813, and Guyana, which sounds like it should be another one) was ruled by Britain... While no immediate claim of responsibility for the slayings was made, suspicion fell on the separatist group founded in 1982 known as the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance. The armed wing of the group had agreed to a cease-fire in 2014, and the last major attack blamed on the group had been in 2013 when rebels took 12 employees of a South African bomb disposal firm hostage. The victims, all Senegalese citizens, were eventually released. Saturday’s deaths came just hours after the release of two prisoners belonging to the separatist group following negotiations that were mediated by the Community of Sant’Egidio. |
| Posted by:Fred |