Fighting continues along shared border

Clashes involving Senegalese separatists and Guinea Bissau troops entered a fourth day on Friday, forcing over a thousand people from their homes in the border region. Since Thursday evening some 300 people – mostly women and children – from Guinea Bissau have packed into trucks and crossed the forested border, arriving in Ziguinchor, the main town in Senegal’s southern Casamance region. Guinea Bissau radio said the more than 1,000 residents of the town of Sao Domingos had deserted their homes after an attack on Friday. Many more people are thought to be hiding in the dense forest or displaced within Guinea Bissau, having fled their homes in panic as rebel fighters from Casmance crossed into Guinea Bissau. “The rebels came towards Sao Domingos at around 5 p.m. firing in every direction,” said Awa Mane, who abandoned her home and all her belongings to flee with her children. “Faced with that, most people decided to flee.” A string of communities along the main road between the Guinea Bissau frontier town Suzana and San Domingos eight kilometres to the south had been abandoned, according to Guinea Bissau radio. In Senegal’s southern Casamance region, separated from the rest of the country by the sliver of land that makes up the Gambia, fighters from the Movement of the Democratic Forces of the Casamance (MFDC) have led a two-decade rebellion that has fizzled in recent years. And in December 2004 MFDC political leaders signed a peace deal with the Senegalese government. But hard-line elements remain – including one faction led by Salif Sadio – that have repeatedly rejected any deals struck with Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade. Sources in Guinea Bissau and Senegal say that Sadio’s faction is at the centre of the current flare up. The entire civilian population of San Domingos and surrounding villages had deserted their homes after Sadio’s fighters launched a two hour attack on military barracks in the town between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. on Friday, according to Guinea Bissau radio reports from the town. But Sao Domingos remained under Guinea Bissau control, according to Colonel Lansana Mansaly of the Guinea Bissau army, who spoke on Senegalese radio Sud-FM on Friday. “Sao Domingos remains under our control. The fighting is still going on in the Baraka-Manjoka area, where Salif Sadio has his base,” Mansaly said. The Guinea Bissau government has confirmed that its troops have clashed with rebels from Casamance and that by Thursday at least two of their soldiers had been killed and others injured, but no further details have been released. Amid the turmoil the Guinea Bissau government on Thursday confirmed 11 people died when a passenger bus exploded when it hit a landmine near San Domingos. It was not clear whether the landmine had been laid recently or whether is was a one of the many relics of the fighting in the region that have killed and maimed many civilians in the Casamance region. In the Guinea Bissau capital, Bissau, residents were following latest news on their radios. The fighting is the worst violence seen in the border region for many years in a country that only recently emerged from a bloody civil war.