Deadly protests rock Senegal as court sentences opposition's Sonko to jail

Nine people have been killed in Senegal in clashes between riot police and supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko after a court sentenced him to two years in jail, casting serious doubt on his chances of running for president next year.

The deaths occurred after protests broke out in parts of capital Dakar and other cities, Interior Minister Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diome said on state television in the early hours of Friday.

"We have noted with regret violence that has led to the destruction of public and private property and, unfortunately, nine deaths in Dakar and Ziguinchor," Diome said.

Government spokesperson Abdou Karim Fofana said security forces had the situation under control in the capital.

Several social media and messaging platforms were restricted in Senegal late on Thursday — a move "likely to significantly impact the public's ability to communicate," the NetBlocks internet observatory said.

Sonko, President Macky Sall's fiercest opponent, was absent when the judgment was handed down on Thursday. He also did not attend the trial.

He was presumed to be at his Dakar home, where he had been blocked in by security forces after being detained at the weekend.

But after two years of a confrontation with the authorities that has kept the country on tenterhooks, he could now be arrested "at any time", Justice Minister Ismaila Madior Fall told journalists.

The university campus in the centre of Dakar looked like a battlefield.

Clashes broke out with groups of young people pelting police in riot gear with stones. Police fired back with tear gas.

Several buses from the faculty of medicine, the history department and the country's leading school of journalism were set on fire and offices ransacked. Classes were suspended until further notice.

Elsewhere, young people attacked a transport ticket office and other public property in parts of the city, burning tyres and placing obstacles in the streets, an AFP photographer saw.

Images of unrest elsewhere in the country circulated on social networks.

Apart from these outbreaks of violence, the streets of Dakar were virtually deserted, an unusual sight in a teeming metropolis.

Trouble was reported elsewhere in the country, in Casamance in the south, Mbour and Kaolack in the west and Saint-Louis in the north.

Satire Mbaye, a presidential party official in the Dakar suburb of Keur Massar, said the party headquarters had been "ransacked."

"They broke the windows and destroyed the equipment inside", she said. "They asked where was the house of Assome Diatta, the party's local leader".

The motorway leading to the airport was cut off by demonstrators, according to local media, while a commuter train connecting the new city of Diamniadio to the capital halted service.