No image available
/ 28 September 2008
The military coup leader who seized power in Mauritania last month has rejected an African ultimatum to reinstate the president.
Most of Mauritania’s political parties on Monday joined forces to back this month’s military coup, as a rally supporting the coup drew thousands.
In his first broadcast address on Sunday, the head of a junta that toppled Mauritania’s president this month vowed to organise elections shortly.
The new military council has pledged that it will hold free and fair elections. But the African Union has suspended Mauritania’s membership.
Deputies in Mauritania’s National Assembly have called for special moves that could open the way for a trial of the ousted president.
Mauritania’s new ruling military junta named Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf, a former ambassador to Belgium, as prime minister on Thursday.
Al-Qaeda’s North Africa wing has called for a holy war in Mauritania to establish Islamic rule after a military junta toppled the country’s president.
The leaders of Mauritania’s coup bowed to international pressure on Monday and released the prime minister and three other high-ranking officials.
Mauritania’s coup leader said his junta will continue to hold the deposed president for ”security reasons” and urged understanding.
Mauritania’s coup leaders have announced they will appoint a government to run the country until new elections.
The army general who successfully toppled Mauritania’s government staged a show of force on Thursday.
Leaders of a military coup in Mauritania said they would hold ”free and transparent” presidential elections ”in the shortest time possible”.
Presidential guardsmen seized Mauritanian President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi in a coup on Wednesday after he sacked several army officers.
Forty-eight members of Mauritania’s Parliament announced on Monday that they were resigning from the ruling party to form a new political group.
Mauritanian security forces recaptured five suspected al-Qaeda militants on Wednesday, including a fugitive accused of killing four French tourists, officials said. The December 24 killing of the French tourists and a shooting attack against the Israeli embassy in Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott, in February raised fears of a rise in Islamic violence.
Police and troops in Mauritania, armed with tear gas and automatic weapons, on Tuesday stormed a building in Nouakchott hunting for Islamic extremists but their quarry managed to escape, security sources said. An operational bomb factory was found in the abandoned house, police said.
No image available
/ 1 February 2008
Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the Israeli embassy in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott early on Friday, police said. The attackers exchanged fire with guards at the embassy. A nearby bar in the centre of Nouakchott was also hit before the assailants fled.
No image available
/ 25 December 2007
Gunmen shot dead four members of a French family on Monday, including at least two children, and badly wounded the father in south-west Mauritania, the French embassy in Nouakchott said. The attack happened at Aleg, 250km east of the capital, a security source said, adding that the gunmen were unidentified.
No image available
/ 16 November 2007
Mauritanian President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi ordered villages to stockpile food to help cushion the effect of rising inflation, his economic adviser said on Thursday. About six thousand tonnes of wheat had already been put aside for the stocks as part of a bid to stabilise prices.
No image available
/ 9 November 2007
The government in Mauritania on Friday defended its handling of food riots this week, claiming that violent protests in opposition strongholds that left one dead were deliberately orchestrated. In the north-west African nation’s coastal capital, Nouakchott, several dozen youths on Friday hurled rocks at buildings.
No image available
/ 7 November 2007
At least 47 migrants died trying to reach Spain’s Canary Islands after drifting for more than two weeks off the west coast of Africa in two boats, police sources in Mauritania said on Tuesday. Mauritania soldiers discovered 42 bodies in the sea near the northern port city of Nouadhibou.
A hearing in the trial of a Mauritanian editor of independent daily El Bedil Athalith, charged with slandering the first lady, was on Monday postponed indefinitely. The Arabic newspaper alleged in articles that the first lady had abused her position as wife of the head of state to raise funds for a charity organisation she headed.
Authorities seized cocaine worth more than -million on Monday in Mauritania’s capital — the country’s largest haul ever, officials said. Security agents arrested five people — two Moroccans, a Senegalese and two Mauritanians with 830kg of cocaine, said state prosecutor Ben Amar Ould Veten.
She struggles under her own weight, lumbering up the stairs, her thighs shaking with each step. Once she reaches the top, it will take several minutes for 50-year-old Mey Mint to catch her breath, the air hissing painfully in and out of her chest. Her rippling flesh is not the result of careless overeating, but rather of a tradition of force-feeding girls in a desert nation where obesity has long been the ideal of beauty.
Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi won Mauritania’s historic presidential election with 52,85% of the vote, the interior minister said on Monday. Ould Abdallahi, who was backed by supporters of Mauritania’s ousted dictator Maaouiya Ould Taya and who has vowed to become a ”reassuring president”, beat Ahmed Ould Daddah in the second-round run-off of the poll.
Mauritanians voted on Sunday in a presidential run-off between a former technocrat and a veteran opposition leader, the last stage of returning civilian rule to the Islamic state bordering the Sahara. The vote follows an inconclusive first round poll two weeks ago and seals a democratic handover by the army junta.
Mauritanians vote on Sunday to choose a civilian president, completing a handover of power by a military junta that took control of the Islamic state on the western edge of the Sahara in a 2005 coup. Voters and international observers hope the poll can establish a multi-party democracy in the largely desert former French colony.
Mauritania has protested to Libya over comments by its leader, Moammar Gadaffi, in which he called Mauritanians ”tribal” and said they were wasting their time with multi-party elections, the official news agency said. Mauritania, a Saharan Islamic state that straddles Arab and black Africa, is holding elections this Sunday to select a civilian president to take over from a military junta.
No image available
/ 21 February 2007
Caught between an encroaching sea of sand and a towering rocky plateau, Tichit has been a staging post for more than nine centuries for camel caravans snaking across the Sahara. Isolated in the most inhospitable part of south-eastern Mauritania, the crumbling buildings of the once-prosperous town are relentlessly buffeted by winds.
No image available
/ 15 January 2007
South Africa’s Giniel de Villiers maintained his stranglehold on the Dakar Rally on Sunday when he took victory in the eighth stage. Race leader De Villiers, driving a Volkswagen, finished ahead of French Mitsubishi pair Stephane Peterhansel and Luc Alphand on the stage from Atar to Tichit.
No image available
/ 13 January 2007
South Africa’s Giniel de Villiers took the Dakar Rally overall lead on Friday after winning the seventh stage between Zouerat and Atar, which was shortened because of a blinding sandstorm. De Villiers, driving a Volkswagen, finished the curtailed, 542km stage almost five minutes ahead of previous race leader Carlos Sainz of Spain.
No image available
/ 4 December 2006
Former opposition parties and independent candidates have won Mauritania’s first parliamentary election since the ouster of Maaouiya Ould Taya, who ruled for 21 years, state media said on Monday. A coalition of ex-opposition parties has won 41 seats of the 95 seats in the new National Assembly after Sunday’s second round of voting.