Senegal says it will invade Gambia if president refuses to accept election defeat

Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz flew to Senegal early Thursday for a meeting with President Macky Sall after last-minute efforts to get Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh to peacefully step down failed, Reuters reports.
In a December election, Jammeh was defeated by real estate developer Adama Barrow, but a week after conceding, he changed his mind. With the support of other leaders in the region, Senegal's president has threatened to invade Gambia in order to forcefully remove Jammeh, who has ruled for more than two decades and once said he would preside over Gambia for "a billion years." Barrow was supposed to be sworn in on Thursday at the national stadium, but a spokesman said the ceremony will now take place at an undisclosed location. As a precaution, tourists have been evacuated from the Gambian capital, Banjul.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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