A student from Saint-Louis University died as a result of his injuries received during a demonstration after the announcement of the postponement of the presidential election by Senegalese President Macky Sall, AFP learned on Wednesday from student and hospital sources .
Prosper Senghor, 22, a first-year mathematics student, is the fourth death in the crisis in Senegal and the second from Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis.
He was hit by a tear gas grenade on Saturday February 10 while protesting against the death the day before of one of his 22-year-old comrades, Alpha Yoro Tounkara, a second year undergraduate geography student, told the AFP Adama Mamadou Kane, president of the Saint-Louis Student Coordination and Anne Marie Diatta, one of his close friends.
“A heart attack linked to his coma”
“We were called this morning to tell us that he had died of a heart attack linked to his coma,” said his childhood friend, also a student at Saint-Louis University.
“He fell into a coma after receiving a tear gas grenade in the chest” on campus, she explained.
Admitted to intensive care at the Saint-Louis regional hospital, he was then transferred to the Dakar hospital where he died.
“He came from Casamance.
He was a peaceful person.
But when I called him the day before, he was angry about the death of his fellow student,” she said.
According to a hospital source in Saint-Louis, the young man was admitted to hospital after inhaling tear gas in connection with the recent demonstrations, and he died last night in Dakar.
Alioune Diallo, president of the association of the Dakar medical faculty, paid tribute to this student on Wednesday morning during a rally to demand the reopening of the Dakar campus, closed since the unrest of June 2023.
“Bad will” by Macky Sall
The political crisis in Senegal has recently experienced new twists and turns.
Last Thursday, the Senegalese Constitutional Council decided to invalidate the postponement of the election to December 15 and to demand that it be held “as soon as possible”.
A decision which was accepted by President Sall.
On Saturday, for the first time, the government authorized a march by opponents in the streets of Dakar.
The Senegalese are now waiting to know the new election date.
On Wednesday, fifteen presidential candidates in Senegal accused the head of state Macky Sall of "bad will", and announced actions to obtain the rapid setting of the date of the election postponed to an as yet undetermined date.