Armed assailants hijack UN vehicle

Armed men made off with cash and vehicles, including one belonging to the UN’s Children’s Agency UNICEF, after staging a highway robbery in the troubled Casamance region of Senegal. Casamance is separated from the rest of Senegal by a sliver of land that makes up the Gambia and has endured a two decade long secessionist rebellion by the Movement for the Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) that had waned until factional fighting spilled into neighbouring Guinea Bissau last month. The UNICEF vehicle, and another belonged to the state electricity company SENELEC, were taken on Friday morning and recovered shortly after by Senegalese police. “A UNICEF vehicle and one from SENELEC were taken though they were found later in a nearby village by police,” said UN security officer Jean Luc Kister on Monday, adding, “It was a simple act of banditry.” The attack took place some 45 km north of the principle Casamance city of Ziguinchor on the main road to The Gambia and on to the Senegalese capital Dakar. Nobody was injured, according to Kister. Mamadou Adama Diallo, a trader from nearby Guinea and one of the victims of the heist, told IRIN he saw one man shot and injured by the assailants when he tried to run away. “They told us to give them all our money or they would kill us. They took money, mobile phones, clothes and jewellery,” said Daillo adding that when one man travelling in the SENELEC vehicle tried to run away he was shot and injured. Reports that the man was taken to Ziguinchor hospital for treatment could not be confirmed. “There were lots of them – more than ten,” said Diallo, saying that some of them wore military fatigues. “Six were on the road and the others were hiding in the bush. They had guns which they used to threaten motorists to stop and fired more than fifteen shots.” Senegalese military sources told IRIN that the attack was staged by fighters aligned to the hard-line MFDC fighter, Salif Sadio, whose main base in Casamance is located at Tambaf, some 80 km north of Ziguinchor. Since mid-March the Guinea Bissau military say that they have been engaged in fighting with Sadio’s faction of the MFDC who have assumed positions in Guinea Bissau territory. The President of Guinea Bissau Joao Bernardo Vieira said last week that his forces would continue their offensive against the Senegalese rebels until all their bases in his country had been “destroyed”. Residents of Ziguinchor, familiar with the rebellion for nearly a generation, believe that Sadio’s men staged the attack to muster funds to continue their battle in Guinea Bissau.