Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/world/africa/16mauritania.html
September 16, 2008
Militants Kill 12 Mauritanian Soldiers in Ambush
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Africa] [Mauritania] [north-west Africa] [proximity to Islamic Maghreb] [after recent military coup] [[in a unstable part of Africa] [proximity to Niger delta where insurgency] [drug and arms runners’ no-man land] [failed states and communal violence relatively common] [military removes democratically elected PM and govt] [first elected govt since independence from French colonials in 1960] [we’re beginning to learn from news how integral Mauritania is in gsave] [use hydra II] [use psci355, 455] [followup from Aug 7-8][*****]
NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania — Militants suspected to be from Al Qaeda killed 12 Mauritanian soldiers on Monday, [****]two senior officials said.
The attack, which came after the militants promised to avenge the military’s recent coup, was the worst suffered by the military in three years.
The assailants ambushed an army unit patrolling the desert in Tourine, about 530 miles north of Nouakchott, the capital, [***]a senior military official said. The same account was also given by a senior official in the president’s office. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.
About two dozen soldiers in four vehicles were on a routine patrol when their convoy was raked with machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, [***]the military official said. Three of the vehicles were destroyed, he said, and a fourth managed to return to base with 10 soldiers aboard.
Al Qaeda in Islamic North Africa had called for a holy war to avenge the overthrow last month by the military of President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, [****] Mauritania’s first freely elected president.
The death toll on Monday was the largest inflicted on the army in a single attack since 2005, when fighters linked to Algeria’s former Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat killed 15 soldiers in an assault on a desert outpost in Mgheiti, which is in the same area, near Mauritania’s borders with Mali and Algeria. [**********]
The group later recast itself as a branch of Osama bin Laden’s Qaeda network operating in northern Africa. [*************]
The United States had sent dozens of troops to train Mauritania’s military in the far northern deserts, hoping the country could act as a bulwark against the southward encroachment of militants linked with Al Qaeda in North Africa. [****]The United States suspended those programs, along with more than $20 million in aid, after the August coup.
In late 2007, gunmen believed to be linked to Al Qaeda murdered four French tourists, [*****] prompting organizers of the Dakar Rally auto race to cancel it this year.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company