Sharjah 24 – AFP: The Senegal government on Friday vowed to use "all means necessary" to return order after police fired tear gas in clashes with supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko as the interior minister said four people had died.
The clashes followed a court ruling that Sonko be held in custody. And following two days of protests, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all sides to avoid any further escalation of the violence.
"The protests must remain peaceful, and the security and police forces must at all times operate... in line with international human rights standards," his spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York.
"The government regrets the loss of four lives" in events "that are rooted in banditry and insurrection", Interior Minister Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diome said on television on Friday, accusing Sonko of "issuing calls to violence".
In Dakar's working class district of Medina earlier, hundreds of young people fought running street battles with riot police and smoke rose from burning tyres at makeshift barricades in the capital city.
Protesters chanted "Free Sonko" on the main Blaise Diagne avenue, the ground strewn with stones, grenade cartridges and burning debris.
"The protests must remain peaceful, and the security and police forces must at all times operate... in line with international human rights standards," his spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York.
In Mbao, in the city's outer suburbs, looters also ransacked a French chain Auchan supermarket, an AFP correspondent at the scene said. The chain says least 14 stores have been attacked during this week's unrest.
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