Clashes in Senegal over virus curfew

DAKAR: Protests tinged by violence broke out late Tuesday in four Senegalese towns over a night-time anti-coronavirus curfew, prompting an appeal for calm by a major Muslim leader, sources said. In Touba, a religious hub 200 kilometres (120 miles) east of the capital Dakar, three police vehicles and an ambulance were set ablaze, a senior official said on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. A coronavirus treatment centre there was attacked and the windows of the offices of electricity provider Senelec were smashed, the source said. Witnesses added that post office buildings in Touba — the seat of the politically powerful Sufi Muslim order called the Mouride Brotherhood — were attacked. In the neighbouring town of Mbacke, protestors erected barricades and burned tyres, others said. The Senegalese media added demonstrations also occurred in Tambacounda, in the east of the country, and Thies, in the west. The caliph, or leader, of the Mouride Brotherhood, Serigne Mountakha Mbacke, made a rare late-night TV appearance to call for an end to the protests in Touba, Senegal’s second-largest city. “Go home.