by Our Foreign Desk
Protesters gathered in Dakar's Independence Square this afternoon to express their opposition to encumbant President Abdoulaye Wade standing in February 26 presidential elections.
The opposition June 23 Movement called the rally after activists erected barricades in a Dakar neighbourhood on Sunday and threw stones at police in the fifth consecutive day of violent protests which have claimed at least six lives.
Mr Wade had overseen several development and infrastructural projects in his 12 years as president and revised the constitution to impose a two-term maximum on the presidency.
But on January 27 the country's constitutional court ruled that he was eligible to run for a third term as the new constitution was not retroactive and so should not apply to him.
That sparked anger in the country and led France and the United States to call on the octogenarian leader to hand power over to the next generation.
And Sunday's clashes took on a sectarian dimension.
Hundreds gathered outside a mosque as religious leaders met to discuss the police's use of grenade launchers to fire tear gas at protesters on Friday.
At one point a canister struck the wall of the mosque and TV footage showed a cloud of gas enveloping worshippers inside as well as the large crowd outside where police had fired.
As the crowd outside the mosque grew larger on Sunday morning, riot police took a defensive position at one end of Lamine Gueye Boulevard, and dozens of youths erupted in jeers.
They began grabbing cinderblocks from a nearby construction site, smashing them on the pavement to make smaller projectiles which they hurled at police.
Security forces responded with waves of tear gas.
Each time the youths charged the police, they shouted: "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great."
Later on Sunday, Interior Minister Ousmane Ngom apologised to the population, calling Friday's attack on the mosque a "police blunder."
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