A 'sea war' brews off Gambia as desperate local fishermen attack foreign vessels, and each other

BANJUL, Gambia — Kawsu Leigh writhed in pain on the fishing boat, his burned skin as mottled as the paint on the deck beneath him. Raw and slick, the burns covered large parts of his upper body.

His day began as normal, with a shift on one of the foreign-owned vessels that carry out commercial fishing in waters off West Africa. It ended with him so badly injured from an arson attack that he struggles to recover a year later.

Local fishermen, angered by what they call illegal encroachment and sabotage by the foreign vessels off Gambia, had again confronted one of the boats, the Egyptian-owned Abu Islam.

But Leigh was a local sailor, too. Video of the attack, exclusively obtained by the Associated Press, documents an emerging problem in the fight for dominance in West African waters. Ga