Sudden violence in Senegal’s Casamance: Gunmen execute 13 youths

Gunmen executed 13 youths deep in the forest of Casamance. Senegal’s heavily forested southern Casamance region, separated from the rest of the country by The Gambia, has been calm for several years since President Macky Sall took power in 2012. (AFP)

ZIGUINCHOR: Gunmen ordered youths to lie on the ground deep in the forest of Casamance before summarily executing 13 of them, a survivor said Sunday following the first upsurge in violence in the isolated Senegalese region in years.
Senegal’s President Macky Sall, condemning an “armed attack of rare barbarity,” summoned his national security council and ordered a ministerial delegation to the scene, a government statement said hours after the attack on Saturday.
Survivor Amadou Diallo said the youths were rounded up while they were collecting wood in the Bayotte forest, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the regional capital Ziguinchor.
Two armed men stopped Diallo early in the morning, he told local radio. “They made me give them my phone and join others who were arrested before me... They got us to take off our shoes and lie down, then fired on us before withdrawing. I wasn’t hit.”
A source in Ziguinchor said that 13 youths were killed, while army spokesman Abdou Ndiaye told AFP that seven others were injured in the attack.
The Senegalese Press Agency said the assailants would have passed a buffer zone between the Senegalese army and separatist rebels of the Movement for Democratic Forces in Casamance (MFDC).
Sall “ordered that the perpetrators of this criminal act be found and brought to justice,” the government statement said, adding that the ministerial delegation would “evaluate the security situation and offer the nation’s condolences to the families.”
The rebels in Casamance began fighting for independence in December 1982 but have long ceased their frequent attacks on soldiers, who retain a visible presence in the area.
“It is too early to say whether the attackers were members of the MFDC,” Ndiaye said. “The enquiry will tell us that.”
The army deployed 150 troops to evacuate the victims and flush out the attackers, while the dead were taken to a hospital morgue.
A resident of Bourafaye Bainouk, a village near the site of the massacre, said he could hear gunfire as soldiers were sweeping the area.
Casamance, separated from the rest of Senegal by The Gambia, has been calm for several years since Sall took power in 2012, though peace talks have failed to yield a definitive settlement.
“There had been no tensions lately, no warning signs,” the army spokesman said.
Ziguinchor governor Ibrahima Sakho said he thought the attack would not derail the peace process. “There’s an irreversible dynamic in the direction of peace,” Sakho said in remarks carried by the news website PressAfrik.
Former colonial power France, whose tourists visit other areas of Senegal in droves, removed Casamance from its list of danger zones in October 2016.
The attack comes a day after the army released two MFDC fighters following negotiations spearheaded by Rome’s Community of Sant’Egidio, a charity with ties to the Vatican specializing in peace mediation.
The Casamance separatist movement left thousands of civilians and military personnel dead and forced many to flee over three decades, as well as hurting the economy dependent on agriculture and tourism.
In a New Year’s message last Sunday, Sall appealed to the Casamance rebels to continue talks to create a “definite peace.”