DAKAR (Reuters) – Two people burned to death and five were seriously injured in Dakar on Tuesday when attackers hurled molotov cocktails into a passenger bus during rush hour in Senegal’s capital, the interior ministry said.
The incident, described by the interior ministry as a “terrorist” act, came just one day after the government dissolved a leading opposition party.
It follows months of unrest in Senegal linked to the perceived sidelining of President Macky Sall’s political opponents ahead of elections next year.
Videos posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, showed a bus in flames, smoke billowing from its insides. In one interior ministry post, the bus driver explains that men approached as he stopped to let a passenger off.
“He held a molotov cocktail in his hands, I did not understand. It was when the customer was getting off that he threw the cocktail.”
Demonstrators took to the streets of Dakar on Monday as leading opposition politician Ousmane Sonko was remanded in custody by a judge on charges that include plotting an insurrection, and later when his party, Pastef, was dissolved.
The government blame Sonko and Pastef for stoking violence in June in which 16 people died and which undermined Senegal’s reputation as a stable country in a restive region.
(Reporting by Diadie Ba and Ngouda Dione; Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Sandra Maler)
