Second Protest Death Deepens Senegal Political Crisis

Dakar, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 11th Feb, 2024) Senegal's political crisis deepened as a second person died Saturday in increasingly violent protests against President Macky Sall's decision to postpone upcoming presidential elections.

The latest violence has brought fresh condemnation from opposition leaders, some of whom were candidates for the presidency.

A fresh round of protests is planned for Tuesday.

Market vendor Modou Gueye, 23, died Saturday after having been shot the previous day during clashes in the capital Dakar, two of his relatives told AFP.

"Tear gas grenades were fired and then we went to the train station at Colobane to go home," his brother, Dame Gueye, told AFP.

"It was there that a gendarme shot him in the stomach with a live round."

His brother-in-law Mbagnick Ndiaye said he had succumbed to his injuries Saturday morning.

Already on Friday, a 22-year-old second-year geography student died in the northern town of Saint-Louis, in circumstances that are still not clear.

In Saint-Louis, Alpha Yoro Tounkara died on the campus of Gaston Berger University where he was studying geography. A hundred of his classmates held an all-night vigil for him.

Videos posted to social media suggest other people were also wounded.

The city's prosecutor said it had opened an investigation into the death. The interior ministry issued a statement denying that security forces had been operating on the university campus.

"The international and regional community must bear witness to the excesses of this dying regime," said presidential candidate Khalifa Sall (no relation to the president).