Police fired tear gas at stone-throwing protesters who rampaged through the Senegalese capital Dakar on Wednesday, smashing cars and looting government offices after authorities cleared away street vendors.
Demonstrators played a cat-and-mouse game with riot police as they set fire to car tyres and rubbish, blocking the main streets into the city centre and forcing businesses to close their shutters, witnesses said.

The worst riots to hit Senegal in many years erupted after President Abdoulaye Wade’s government ordered police last week to move on street sellers in Dakar, where thousands of people earn a living peddling goods on the crowded, potholed streets.

“People are fed up. These are youths who sell things in the street who voted the president in and now he wants to chase them away, so they have had enough,” said Ouzin Diop, 28, watching from behind the iron railings of the supermarket where he works.
“It’s a long time since we’ve seen anything like this.”

Senegal has long been regarded as a bastion of stability in volatile West Africa, but social tensions have risen due to spiralling living costs and high unemployment. This has forced thousands of young people each year to risk their lives trying to reach Spain’s Canary Islands in rickety boats.

Since comfortably winning re-election in February, the octogenarian Wade has been criticised for pushing ahead with an ambitious infrastructure programme in Dakar to host an Islamic conference next year, while ignoring the plight of ordinary Senegalese, most of whom live below the poverty line.

DISTURBANCES SPREAD
Plumes of black smoke rose above the city’s business district, set on the western tip of Africa’s coast, as riot police pursued youths down side streets choked with tear gas. The disturbances started in the Sandaga market area but soon spread to neighbouring residential quarters, witnesses said.
Casualty figures were not immediately available, but dozens of protesters were arrested, witnesses said. In the Medina neighbourhood, rioters sacked the local mayor’s office, burned at least one car and looted the headquarters of the national electricity company, Senelec.

Vans packed with riot police rushed towards the disturbances in the city centre. In one of them, police beat a detained protester with batons, a Reuters witness said.
“If you take from the people the little that they have, you can’t blame them from protesting,” said one foreign resident, closing the windows of her downtown apartment to stop tear gas from entering.

Wade ordered the clearances after meeting with business leaders who complained about working hours lost due to Dakar’s congested streets, where pedestrians are forced to walk in the road due to wooden stalls blocking the pavements.

“We will carry on clearing our streets,” Dakar Governor Amadou Sy told national television late on Tuesday before the disturbances erupted.