The West African troops were engaged in a fierce gun battle with pro-Jammeh elements and mercenaries today, Sunday, when they entered The Gambia to secure ground for President Adama Barrow’s arrival from neighbouring Senegal where he had been sworn-in at the time the ousted President Yahya Jammeh stayed-put in power.
It was gathered that the West African troops entered The Gambia to control strategic points to ensure the safety of the population and facilitate Barrow’s assumption of his role as the new country’s President.”
Senegalese forces had briefly crossed into the former British colony on Thursday but pulled out shortly afterwards, with Sunday’s troop movement the first by soldiers from the joint force.
A top official with the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS), which organized the deployment, Marcel Alain de Souza, said that pro-Jammeh elements and mercenaries remained on the ground and had opened fire as troops crossed the border.
“They were neutralized,” he said in a statement, without elaborating.
De Souza said that the country “could not be left open” for long, and that Barrow must be in place “as soon as possible.
“A country must have a government, but the security conditions required the troops we have sent to secure Banjul and other towns.”
A security guard, Babacar Jallow said: “we are going to wait for Barrow at the airport all the way to State House. Before we were scared to come out.” He described Jammeh as “a killer.”
With Jammeh gone, all eyes will be on the Barrow administration as they make their first steps as a government of reform and development.
A key official in the government-in-waiting, Isatou Touray, said: “the will of the people have come to be — at last.”
Ex President Jammeh took power in a 1994 coup from the country’s only other president since independence from Britain, Dawda Jawara, making this The Gambia’s first democratic transition of power. [myad]
