Port-Gentil Gabon - Gabon security forces patrolled second city Port-Gentil on Friday as civilian traffic began to return, after the government threatened to invoke emergency powers to quell post-election violence that killed at least three people.
The West African country's oil hub remains under a dawn to dusk curfew but taxis and some civilian traffic returned to the streets on Monday. Some stores opened for the first time in days, but banks and many shops remained shut.
Dozens of fearful residents had fled Port-Gentil aboard motorised canoes at the weekend, with air services from the peninsular seaport suspended after France's consulate and a club for French oil workers were torched.
The violence erupted Thursday when Ali Bongo, 50, was declared the winner of presidential elections to succeed his father Omar Bongo, who ruled the oil-rich West African nation for 41 years until his death in June.
The unrest was concentrated in Port-Gentil, the stronghold of opposition leader Pierre Mamboundou, who alleged widespread fraud and who has been missing since leading a sit-in protest outside the offices of the electoral committee on September 3.
Mamboundou was reportedly injured in the scuffles, according to his Union of Gabonese People party, whose officials say he has not been seen since.
The poorer areas of the city bore the brunt of the violence, with dozens of cars, shops and market stalls burned out by rioters angry at France's perceived influence in bringing another Bongo to power.
France has repeatedly denied influencing the vote.
Stall owners picked throught the ruins of the businesses on Monday after a weekend of rioting.
"I've lost everything," said fruit-seller Justine Obame. "The first night they burned everything in the area. The next night, they came back to take what they had left behind. I have 13 children and I don't know what I'm going to do."
"The youths were looting, and the soldiers arrived later and took their turn at looting," said another stall-owner who ghave her name as Carole.
Interior Minister Jean-Francois Ndongou said during a visit to Port-Gentil on Sunday that calm was gradually returning to the city.
However, the situation was described as precarious by a UPG official who did not want to be identified: "It's all uncertain, something could happen at any moment."
Mamboundou took the lion's share of the vote locally but only came third nationally, with 25 percent of the vote, behind Bongo, who polled 42 percent, and former interior minister Andre Mba Obame with 26 percent, according to the official results.
Mba Obame made his first public appearance in three days on Saturday, during a meeting of defeated candidates, but he made no public comment.
Even in the aftermath of the violence on Monday, local youths remained defiant. "We don't want Ali. Mamboundou is the one who won the elction. That's it," said one.
"Bongo did nothing for the country in 40 years. What's Ali going to bring us? Nothing!" shouted another.
During the campaign, Bongo junior promised to make his country, sub-Saharan Africa's fourth biggest oil producer, into a "little Dubai".
In the city's Grand-Village riot scarred market area, someone had written on the door of a burned-out shop: "Give us a little Dubai".