Poll strife threat empties Banjul

Gambians and tourists were boarding buses, packing suitcases onto trucks and hiring canoes to flee the capital yesterday, as President Yahya Jammeh clung to power on the eve of his rival Adama Barrow's planned swearing in.

Jammeh, a former soldier who once vowed to rule for "a billion years", is refusing to step down, despite condemnation from regional leaders and even the threat of an imminent invasion by west African troops to enforce his poll defeat.

In a sign that he is digging in, Gambia's National Assembly has passed a resolution to allow Jammeh to stay in office for three months from yesterday.

The president's allies have deserted in their droves - eight ministers have so far resigned, four of them in the past 48 hours - and it is unclear how many of his armed forces will be willing to defend him once his mandate expires.

But many Gambians are not waiting to find out.

At the sandy Bundung Garage bus station in Banjul women carrying infants strapped to their backs queued up to get their salvaged belongings onto buses bound for the border with Senegal after Jammeh declared a state of emergency on Tuesday.

Men and children sat patiently amid piles of suitcases, rolled up foam mattresses, bags of rice, bottles of cooking oil.

"The last three days we've been submerged," said bus park manager Sonore Momodou Choi, his face shaded from the blazing sun by a fishing hat.

Others fled on pirogues across the river that splits Africa's smallest country down the middle.

In a supreme court petition, Jammeh said the electoral commission was subjected to "foreign influence" and biased against him.

The streets around the popular Senegambia resort strip, normally packed with tourists, were mostly empty apart from a few holiday-makers withdrawing money from ATM machines.

"It's a disaster, all my tourists are leaving," said nature tour guide Abou, who had a pair of binoculars hanging from his neck in the hope of getting a final tour before everything shuts down.