Senegal's army said Monday that it has captured several rebel bases in the West African state's southern Casamance region, as part of a fresh push against separatists launched last month.

Lieutenant-Colonel Mathieu Diogaye Sene, a commander in the region, said that two soldiers were wounded in the operations on the border with Guinea-Bissau which began on May 31.

Sene did not specify whether any separatists had been wounded or killed.

One of Africa's oldest ongoing conflicts, the fighting in Casamance has claimed thousands of lives since it first broke out in December 1982.

The region had returned to an uneasy calm in recent years until the army launched a major new offensive on January 26, capturing rebel bases in remote forests on the southern border.

Home to 1.9 million people, Casamance was once among Portugal's colonies in West Africa along with what is today Guinea-Bissau.

But the region is now located within the former French colony of Senegal -- although it is almost separated from the rest of the country by The Gambia river.

The remoteness of Casamance has fed into perceptions of discrimination by the government in the far-off capital Dakar and helped create an independence movement.

Colonel Souleymane Kande, a commander speaking in Casamance's capital Ziguinchor, told AFP that the army launched an operation to better control the border region on May 31.

He added that the military captured several bases from the separatist Casamance Movement of Democratic Forces (MFDC).

The fresh push is intended to resettle people whom conflict drove from the region, according to the army, as well as to stop alleged rebel exactions on locals, and to clamp down on drug and timber trafficking.

Guinea-Bissau had long faced accusations of aiding Casamance separatists. But the country supports the latest Senegalese offensive, according to observers.

Umaro Sissoco Embalo, an ally of Senegalese President Macky Sall's, took office in Guinea-Bissau last year.

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