Politics
Senegal: Civil unrest mounting on eve of Wade’s victory
Late Friday, police attempting to disperse a crowd launched a tear gas grenade inside a mosque belonging to the Tidiane Muslim “confrerie,” or brotherhood. Enraged worshippers ran outside.
Senegalese TV showed an officer who braved the cloud of gas in order to kick away the spewing canister from the door of the mosque, in order to calm the anger.
The country’s Muslim brotherhoods hold enormous sway, and on Saturday, Interior Minister Ousmane Ngom traveled to Tivaouane, home of the Tidiane’s khalife, religious leader. A mob of angry youths encircled the house of the khalife, as Ngom was inside, according to Ngom’s spokesman Mbaye Thiam who was reached by telephone in Dakar.
The state-owned news service said that the youths were preventing Ngom from leaving and that they had also set fire to a government building nearby.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
