Demonstrators, mostly Lebanese living in Senegal, denounced the Israeli offensive in Lebanon on Saturday in Dakar, noted an AFP journalist.
One hundred and seventeen Senegalese also arrived in Dakar on Saturday evening, fleeing the violence in Lebanon, a source at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told AFP on Saturday evening.
The head of state Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who welcomed them, was delighted that they “returned safe and sound”, in a message on social networks.
The Senegalese government announced on Saturday that it had “taken measures for the voluntary repatriation of its nationals to Lebanon”.
A few hours earlier, around a hundred demonstrators attacked Israel, during a march of around 1.5 km, at the initiative of the Lebanese community in Senegal, near downtown Dakar, according to a journalist of the AFP.
“Criminal Israel!” or “Free Lebanon!” (Liberate Lebanon!), chanted these protesters who also carried signs denouncing the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.
“We cannot remain insensitive to the pain of those who every day see their country being torn apart. It is time for the violence to stop. We are marching to denounce injustice,” a spokesperson for the demonstrators told AFP, Zaher Zeidna.
“The war in Lebanon and Gaza is an unspeakable tragedy, it is a genocide,” he added.
At the end of August, Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko accused his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu of continuing the war in Gaza for his own political survival and recommended isolating Israel to put an end to this “barbarism (…) endorsed by certain Western countries.” during a rally in support of the Palestinians.
The war that has been raging in this Palestinian territory since October 7, 2023 has spread to Lebanon, where Israel launched a ground offensive in the south of the country on September 30, supported by aerial bombardments, against pro-Iranian Hezbollah.
Israel says it wants to neutralize Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian Hamas, in regions close to the Israeli border and allow the return to the north of its territory of some 60,000 inhabitants, displaced for a year by incessant rocket fire from the Islamist movement.
At least 1,418 people have been killed in Lebanon since the start of massive Israeli bombings against Hezbollah on September 23, according to an AFP count based on official data.
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