Dakar - Senegal police turned away small groups of opposition protesters Monday after days of riots against President Abdoulaye Wade's bid for a third term.

Riot police took up their stations in the downtown suburb of Plateau -- the theatre of street clashes for the past five days -- and blocked access to Independence Square.

Small groups of protesters arrived with presidential candidates by late afternoon, leaving grudgingly at the behest of police commissioner Arona Sy.

Shopowners had nervously closed early and the city emptied out with fears of fresh violence as tensions run high ahead of Sunday's election.

The president's spokesman Serigne Mbacke Ndiaye lamented recent violence in the west African nation, a former French colony known as one of the continent's pioneer democracies with no history of coups or conflicts.

"This electoral campaign has known difficulties, clashes, which we regret. These incidents have no place in an electoral campaign," Ndiaye told journalists.

French foreign ministry spokesman Vincent Floreani expressed the country's "deep concern over the rising tensions in Senegal in recent days."

Senegal has been put "to fire and sword," headlined the daily Le Pop after fresh riots erupted Sunday in which another person was killed, bringing the death toll to six since protests erupted in late January, according to an AFP tally.