The President of Senegal gets involved in a land dispute causing tensions in Dakar

The challenge by the Lébous to a project to build a gendarmerie in the Ngor district has hardened in recent days and caused violent confrontations which culminated on Tuesday between part of the population and the gendarmes.

According to images released Wednesday by the presidency, Macky Sall brought together representatives of Ngor and Lebous late Tuesday evening. He decided to share the land "equally" between the gendarmerie and the population and announced the construction of a high school, she said.

The images circulating on social networks had previously shown groups of young people confronting with the help of stones and incendiary devices a large force of law enforcement retaliating with tear gas. Witnesses described a neighborhood cordoned off by the gendarmes and become almost inaccessible.

Mamadou Ndiaye, president of the "Ngor Debout" movement, quoted in the press, reported the death of two people in the clashes, including a young girl, and many injured.

No human toll has been officially communicated. The gendarmerie did not respond to AFP. The Interior Ministry reported in a statement on Wednesday the discovery of the body of a 15-year-old girl on Ngor beach but said she was "probably" killed by a boat propeller.

The Lébous are a group traditionally engaged in fishing and living in the Dakar peninsula and on the west coast of Senegal. They have been opposing for weeks the erection of the gendarmerie station on a plot of more than 6.000 square meters which they say they own. They denounce the lack of infrastructure for use by the population in a very working-class district.

They regularly rise up against the grabbing of their ancestral lands in a rapidly expanding city subject to significant land and real estate pressure.

The government had claimed for its part that it had bought the plot from its owner.

Without being linked to it, the outbreak of fever in Ngor coincided with tensions caused by the possible exclusion of opponent Ousmane Sonko from the presidential race in 2024. The threat of ineligibility weighing on him raises fears a violent reaction from his supporters.

On social networks Tuesday evening, Mr. Sonko erected the district as a symbol of resistance against an "arbitrary and deliberately violent regime". He called on the outlying districts to show solidarity.

Government spokesman Abdou Karim Fofana said he saw these remarks as confirmation that Mr. Sonko "is capable of walking over corpses to achieve his ends".