Senegal Police Raid TV Station After Protest

After the images were broadcast, dozens more youths gathered to throw stones at police.

Senegalese police raided a private television station on Sunday after it repeatedly transmitted images of police beating demonstrators during an illegal protest over high food prices.

Walf TV broadcast footage of police striking demonstrators with electrified batons and firing tear gas to break up the banned protest by more than a hundred people in the suburbs of the Senegalese capital Dakar.

Three people were arrested, including the head of the Association of Senegalese Consumers, the group which organised the march to call attention to a sharp rise in the cost of living in the poor West African country.

After the images were broadcast, dozens more youths gathered to throw stones at police.

"Members of the DIC entered our offices and demanded us to hand over the cassettes of today's demonstration," Aissatou Diop Fall, head of Walf TV, told Reuters.

Dakar witnessed the worst rioting in more than a decade last year, as hundreds of youths smashed windows and burned tyres in anger at high prices and government efforts to clear away street traders.

Violent protests have also taken place in Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Mauritania in recent months over a sharp rise in the cost of food, partly due to high international fuel prices and the increasing use of bio-fuels.

Walf TV is one of four private channels in Senegal, in addition to state-run RTS.