By Omar Bah
The Army Spokesperson, Major Lamin Sanyang has said reports circulating on social media over a confrontation between Gambian soldiers stationed in Farafenni and Senegalese soldiers under Ecomig were blown out of proportion.
Reports emerged on social media on Saturday that a confrontation ensued after Gambian soldiers stopped Senegalese gendarmerie officers who were escorting a military ambulance carrying a patient back to Senegal for medical attention.
But PRO Sanyang said the incident was just a matter of miscommunication.
He said the Battalion Commander in Farafenni intervened and resolved the matter amicably by ordering the three Senegalese gendarmeries to return to Kanfenda which they did.
The GAF spokesman said the commander later assigned some of his men to escort the ambulance to the border village of Kerr Ayib.
“The issue is that the GAF headquarters hadn’t receive communication that these men were coming and it was late in the night. On normal circumstances, they send us prior notice of the movement of their troops. But the moment they told us this was a patient on board, the Battalion Commander intervened and it was maturely handled,” he said.
He said the armed forces should be the last people that would cause the degeneration of tension between the two countries.
“Sometimes people tend to blow these things out of proportion and we have to be very careful because of the relation that the two countries share,” he said.
