Mauritanian army troops launch coup

NOUAKCHOTT – Gunfire rang out near the presidency building in Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott yesterday after soldiers surrounded state radio and blocked off streets in the city, a witness said.

President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya was out of the country after attending the funeral of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd in Riyadh on Tuesday. “I heard a burst of gunfire near the presidency.I saw scared people running away.Civil servants have all left their offices,” the Reuters witness said.He said state radio had been off air since the early morning.The French embassy in Nouakchott said it was monitoring the situation in the former colony but declined to make any further comment.A second Reuters witness on the border with Senegal said border guards were preventing people from leaving the country.Dissident soldiers came close to toppling Taya in June 2003 during two days of street fighting in Nouakchott before loyalist forces regained control.The government says it foiled two more coup attempts in 2004.”All the army is in the streets.It’s blocking the roads to the presidency and the main routes through town,” a civil servant who lives near the presidency building told Reuters.”I went to my office but was told to go home, that there would be no work today,” he said.Shops were closed and taxis were not stopping to pick up those trying to leave the centre of town.President Taya seized power in a 1984 coup.He has angered many Arabs in the country, which straddles black and Arab Africa, by shifting support from former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Israel and Washington in the 1990s.Mauritania – which hopes to start pumping oil early next year – is one of only three Arab League member states that have established diplomatic ties with Israel.It is also one of the most repressive countries in the region towards Islamist movements, analysts say.Police have arrested scores of Islamic opposition leaders and activists since April, accusing them of colluding with the Algerian-based Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), a movement allied to al Qaeda.In May, security forces searched mosques around the capital, seizing Koranic texts and arresting mosque officials.Analysts have warned that Mauritania’s attempts to stifle opposition groups by denouncing them as terrorists risks backfiring by radicalising moderate Islamists.- Nampa-Reuters”I heard a burst of gunfire near the presidency.I saw scared people running away.Civil servants have all left their offices,” the Reuters witness said.He said state radio had been off air since the early morning.The French embassy in Nouakchott said it was monitoring the situation in the former colony but declined to make any further comment.A second Reuters witness on the border with Senegal said border guards were preventing people from leaving the country.Dissident soldiers came close to toppling Taya in June 2003 during two days of street fighting in Nouakchott before loyalist forces regained control.The government says it foiled two more coup attempts in 2004.”All the army is in the streets.It’s blocking the roads to the presidency and the main routes through town,” a civil servant who lives near the presidency building told Reuters.”I went to my office but was told to go home, that there would be no work today,” he said.Shops were closed and taxis were not stopping to pick up those trying to leave the centre of town.President Taya seized power in a 1984 coup.He has angered many Arabs in the country, which straddles black and Arab Africa, by shifting support from former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Israel and Washington in the 1990s.Mauritania – which hopes to start pumping oil early next year – is one of only three Arab League member states that have established diplomatic ties with Israel.It is also one of the most repressive countries in the region towards Islamist movements, analysts say.Police have arrested scores of Islamic opposition leaders and activists since April, accusing them of colluding with the Algerian-based Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), a movement allied to al Qaeda.In May, security forces searched mosques around the capital, seizing Koranic texts and arresting mosque officials.Analysts have warned that Mauritania’s attempts to stifle opposition groups by denouncing them as terrorists risks backfiring by radicalising moderate Islamists.- Nampa-Reuters