Nouakchott

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.

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.

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.

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.

European Union observers on Wednesday commended the good conduct of weekend parliamentary and municipal elections held in Mauritania after a military coup, saying there were no major irregularities. ”The elections were carried out in … a free, open and fair political environment,” said Marie-Anne Isler Beguin, head of the EU’s election observation mission.

Mauritanians began voting on Sunday in the Islamic republic’s first elections since the end of 21 years of authoritarian rule in a bloodless coup 15 months ago. Voting commenced at 7am local time and Mauritanians have 12 hours to cast their ballots at 2 336 polling stations scattered across this mainly Sahara desert country straddling West Africa and Arab North Africa.

Voters in the poverty stricken West African nation of Mauritania overwhelmingly approved a new Constitution in a weekend referendum, Interior Ministry officials said on Monday. Officials said that based on early returns they believed that 80% to 90% voted on Sunday to approve the Constitution.

French driver Thierry Magnaldi won the eighth stage of the Dakar Rally on Saturday as two-time defending champion Stephane Peterhansel regained the overall lead in his Mitsubishi. Magnaldi, in a Schlesser-Ford, took the 508km stage from Atar to Nouakchott in five hours and 56 seconds to celebrate his second stage win on this year’s event.

A group of army officers in Mauritania announced the overthrow of President Maaoya Sid’Ahmed Taya on Wednesday. Earlier, troops took control of the national radio and television stations and seized a building housing the army chief of staff’s headquarters while the president was out of the country.

The Mauritanian government has arrested Saleh Ould Hanenna, the mastermind of last year’s military uprising against President Maaouiya Ould Taya, who had been on the run for 16 months. Attorney General Mohamed El Ghaith Ould Oumar said the former army major was caught on Saturday in Rosso, a town on the southern border with Senegal.