Regional Force Searches for Illegal Arms, Mercenaries in Gambia

West African troops entered Gambia’s capital, Banjul, on Sunday, in a bid to secure the country and allow new President Adama Barrow to take office after its former ruler, Yahya Jammeh, fled overnight.

The troops earlier assembled for purpose of forcing Jammeh out of office, now has a mandate to search out mercenaries and recover illegal arms and ammunition.

Jammeh flew out of Banjul late on Saturday en route to Equatorial Guinea, as the regional force was poised to remove him.

The troops from Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana and Mali were, reportedly, deploying throughout Gambia, on Sunday, as part of efforts to secure the country and allow Barrow to take charge.

“We will look for arms caches and detect mercenaries, so that we can restore calm,” said Marcel de Souza, president of the ECOWAS commission, explaining to reporters overnight the new phase of the military operation.

“Adama Barrow hopes to go back as quickly as possible,” Souza added.

Several witnesses in Barra, a town on the opposite bank of the Gambia River from Banjul, told Reuters, on Sunday, they saw scores of soldiers massing near a ferry terminal.

“I saw a lot of them. Too many to count,” said Pamadou Joof, 26, who operates a pirogue, a type of small boat. “They had vehicles and a lot of guns.”

Another witness, on Sunday, saw war planes flying over Banjul, which remained calm despite some concern over how the army, a pillar of Jammeh’s regime, would react to his departure.

The regional operation was launched late on Thursday, after Barrow was sworn in as president at Gambia’s embassy in neighbouring Senegal, but it was then halted to give Jammeh one last chance to leave peacefully.

His departure followed two days of negotiations led by Guinea’s President Alpha Conde and Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania.

Jammeh’s loss in a December 1 poll and his initial acceptance of the result were celebrated across the tiny nation by Gambians, who have grown weary of his increasingly authoritarian rule. But he reversed his position a week later, creating a standoff with regional neighbours who demanded he step down.

An estimated 45,000 people fled to Senegal amid growing fears of unrest in the wake of the election, according to the United Nations.

Hundreds of Gambians carrying sacks, suitcases and cooking pots began returning by ferry from Senegal’s Casamance region, on Sunday.

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