Police fired tear gas at stone-throwing protesters who rampaged through the Senegalese capital Dakar on Wednesday, burning tyres and smashing car windows after authorities cleared away street vendors.
Several hundred rioters set fire to piles of rubbish, blocking streets and traffic and forcing businesses to close their shutters, witnesses said.
”The street sellers are throwing stones at police,” said Mamadou Diallo, as he swept up debris outside a closed commercial centre. ”The police replied by firing tear gas.”
Plumes of black smoke rose above the city’s business district, set on the western tip of Africa’s coast, as riot police pursued youths down sidestreets choked with tear gas. The disturbances spread to neighbouring residential quarters, witnesses said.
Casualty figures were not immediately available.
Vans packed with riot police rushed towards the disturbances in the city centre. In one of them, police beat a detained protester with batons, a Reuters witness said.
The riots, the most serious to hit Senegal in years, erupted after President Abdoulaye Wade’s government ordered police last week to move on street sellers from Dakar, where thousands of people earn a living peddling goods on the streets. – Reuters