Army captures separatist bases

SENEGAL’S army said yesterday that it had captured several rebel bases in the West African state’s southern Casamance region, as part of a fresh push against separatists launched last month. Two soldiers were wounded in the operations on the border with Guinea-bissau.

The fighting in Casamance has claimed thousands of lives since it first broke out in 1982. The region had returned to an uneasy calm until the army launched a major new offensive in January, capturing rebel bases in remote forests on the southern border.

Home to 1.9 million people, Casamance was once among Portugal’s colonies in West Africa along with what is today Guinea-bissau. But the region is now located within the former French colony of Senegal, although it is almost separated from the rest of the country by The Gambia River. This has fed into perceptions of discrimination by the government in Dakar and helped create an independence movement.

The fresh push is intended to stop alleged rebel exactions on locals, and to clamp down on drug and timber trafficking.