The Senegalese army carried out operations and bombings in Casamance (South) on Sunday, the scene of one of the oldest active African rebellions, said an army spokesman and a witness.
Blasts apparently coming from the south of Ziguinchor, the main town of Casamance, were heard in neighboring Guinea-Bissau.
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“
Around 3 am (local and GMT) we heard very loud bangs very close to the Senegalese border.
We fired at regular intervals until 7 am,
”said an AFP correspondent Quecuto Djaura, a notable from Sao Domingos, a town in Guinea-Bissau about twenty kilometers away.
The bombings targeted the positions of rebel leader César Atoute Badiate, head of one of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) factions, Senegalese media said.
The army spokesman did not provide details.
“
Operations are underway.
The goal is to create the conditions for the return of populations to their homes,
”he said in a message to AFP, referring to the many people displaced by decades of conflict.
An old conflict
Casamance has been the scene of a rebellion since separatists took to the bush with rudimentary weaponry after the repression of an MFDC march in December 1982. The rebellion flourished on the particularism of this fertile but largely isolated region. from Senegal to Gambia and prone to a feeling of neglect. After claiming thousands of lives and devastating the economy, the conflict has continued slowly, with heat waves such as the massacre of 14 men near Ziguinchor in January 2018. In recent years, the Senegalese authorities have undertaken to resettle the displaced. At the end of January, the army launched operations against rebel positions to allow, she said, these returns and put an end to the flourishing trafficking in wood or cannabis. It sIt also acts to put an end to the atrocities committed against civilians, according to it.
President Macky Sall, after coming to power in 2012, relaunched negotiations for a settlement of the conflict. But they did not lead to a final agreement, complicated by divisions within the MFDC. Representatives of the Senegalese state and the rebellion met in April in Cape Verde.
