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/ 30 April 2008

Mauritania captures al-Qaeda suspects in sweep

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.

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/ 25 December 2007

French family of five shot in Mauritania

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.

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/ 9 November 2007

Mauritanian govt says food riots engineered

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.

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/ 28 August 2007

Mauritania postpones editor’s slander hearing

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.

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/ 17 April 2007

Desert country battles to break culture of fat women

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.

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/ 26 March 2007

Abdallahi wins Mauritania’s presidential vote

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.

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/ 11 March 2007

Mauritanians vote in handover to civilian rule

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.

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/ 7 March 2007

Mauritania takes exception to Gadaffi comments

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.

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/ 22 November 2006

EU gives Mauritania elections thumbs up

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.

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/ 19 November 2006

Polls open in Mauritania’s landmark elections

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.

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/ 8 January 2006

Peterhansel regains overall Dakar lead

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.

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/ 8 August 2005

Mauritanian junta names new prime minister

Mauritania’s self-declared head of state named a new prime minister to replace the former premier who resigned along with his Cabinet after last week’s coup. A judge also freed 21 people who had been detained for plotting against the ousted regime. Junta leader Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall named Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar as prime minister.

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/ 4 August 2005

Mauritanian junta names new leader

African leaders have condemned the coup in the West African state of Mauritania, saying the days of authoritarianism and military rule must end across the continent. A military junta toppled Mauritania’s autocratic president while he was abroad, replacing him with the longtime chief of this oil-rich desert nation’s police force.

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/ 3 August 2005

Mauritania: Army officers declare coup

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.

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/ 28 February 2005

Mauritania gets to grips with Aids education

In the wooden shanty town of Elmina on the outskirts of Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott, Aids educators do not let religious or cultural conservatism get in their way. A wooden dummy of a penis fitted with a condom is used to instruct people about the dangers of unprotected sex — a somewhat unexpected sight in a country that is almost entirely Muslim, and where discussions about sex have tended to be taboo.

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/ 13 October 2004

Mauritania arrests coup mastermind

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.