MAURITANIA: Loyalist troops seized back the heart of Mauritania's capital yesterday from rebels trying to oust its Arab president, who has locked up Islamist opponents and has courted Israel.
Nouakchott trembled to the sound of shell fire as President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya's soldiers launched an assault before sunrise with the help of reinforcements rushed from garrisons in the desert interior of the northwest African country.
President Taya, in his first radio broadcast since fighting erupted early on Sunday, said his forces had succeeded in putting down an attempted coup. "The patriotic forces beat this plot that aimed to end the process of development and emancipation," he said. "It took time because it was necessary to destroy tank after tank. As I speak, the operation is complete."
Sporadic gunfire shifted out to the suburbs as the rebels were driven out. They had stormed the presidential palace on Sunday in the biggest challenge to President Taya since he took power in a bloodless 1984 coup.
"Victory, victory," his supporters chanted as they cruised dusty streets with car horns blaring. Sensitive areas such as the palace remained cordoned off. "The putsch is over, the army is back in control," assured one soldier standing guard at a checkpoint.
Split between black Africans and light-skinned Arabs, the almost exclusively Muslim country had been gripped before the coup by unease over the arrest of dozens of President Taya's Islamist opponents.
The Arab president's friendship with Israel finds little favour in the largely desert country on the Atlantic coast.
Residents say they believe the uprising was staged by an armoured unit and the air force. Officials say in private they suspect the involvement of an officer removed two years ago for whipping up discontent over the links with Israel.
Hospitals have struggled to cope with scores of wounded. Medical workers said they could not tell how many had been killed.
The coup-plotters have not made any public statement and it was unclear whether the attempted coup was linked to growing political tension after the crackdown on Islamists and politicians close to ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Thirty-two Islamic leaders were charged this month with threatening national security.
In 1999, Mauritania became only the third Arab League state to establish full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Israel has given Mauritania help with agriculture and is also building a new hospital.
President Taya, a former army colonel, won elections in 1992 and 1997 and is expected to stand again later this year.