A top Senegalese rebel leader has declared a unilateral ceasefire, raising hopes of ending one of West Africa’s longest-running conflicts.<\/p>\n
Salif Sadio said he wanted to give the peace process initiated by President Macky Sall a chance.<\/p>\n
Mr Sadio leads a rebel MFDC faction fighting for the southern Casamance region’s independence since 1982.<\/p>\n
A number of peace deals and ceasefires agreed in the past have failed to end the violence.<\/p>\n
Thousands of people have been killed in the low-level conflict.<\/p>\n
Tourist industry<\/strong><\/p>\n Mr Sadio told a local radio station that his decision to declare a ceasefire followed talks between the government and his Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) group in Italy.<\/p>\n Both sides had agreed at the meeting to take steps to facilitate the peace process and end the suffering of people, correspondents say.<\/p>\n The rebels target the army and plant landmines in a region which once had a thriving tourist industry because of its beaches.<\/p>\n In May 2013, 11 demining experts hostage were taken hostage by the rebels. They were released about two months later.<\/p>\n A rival MFDC group signed a peace pact with the government in 2004.<\/p>\n Conflict first broke out over claims by the region’s people that they were being marginalised by the Wolof, Senegal’s main ethnic group.<\/p>\n Casamance, which is separated from the rest of Senegal by The Gambia, is home to numerous ethnic groups, including many Christians, while northern areas are dominated by three, largely Muslim communities.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A top Senegalese rebel leader has declared a unilateral ceasefire, raising hopes of ending one of West Africa’s longest-running conflicts. Salif Sadio said he wanted to give the peace process initiated by President Macky Sall a chance. Mr Sadio leads a rebel MFDC faction fighting for the southern Casamance region’s independence since 1982. A number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":15707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-15706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}