By Tamba Jean-Matthew
The Citizen Correspondent
Dakar. An infuriated Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has ordered the country’s armed forces to pursue the fleeing Casamance separatist rebels “everywhere even inside Gambia”.

The order comes in the aftermath of a deadly attack on Tuesday by separatist rebels that killed about ten soldiers in the troubled southern Casamance region.

“They could be hiding in the forests and across the border to the Gambia, but pursue them wherever they may be found and let them face the law”, President Wade told the army leadership in Dakar.

If only temporarily, the incident shifted public attention away from months of political polarisation as the president gears to contest for a controversial third mandate which the opposition are insisting is unconstitutional.

President Wade’s order is certain to heighten the already tense relations with neighbouring Gambia, which the Senegalese government suspects of aiding the Casamance separatists. Last year, Senegal broke diplomatic relations with Iran over an arms shipment Dakar claimed was intended for the rebels. The shipment was confiscated in Nigeria.

Like many other Senegalese, President Wade is of the firm conviction that the rebel Movement des Forces Democratique de Casamance (or Mfdc) which is fighting for the region’s independence is backed by Gambia and Guinea Bissau.

But since the assassination of the pro-Mfdc Gen Ansoumana Mané of Guinea Bissau in the late Nineties, Senegal’s suspicion has increasingly been fixated on the Gambia.

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