Mauritania hunts Al Qaeda militants

The Mauritanian government is on the hunt for militants who attacked a military convoy Monday, hoping to catch them before they sneak across the border into Algeria or Mali.

The cat-and-mouse game across the West African nation's vast desert areas is the first big security test for Mauritania's new military government, which seized power in an Aug. 6 coup that overthrew the country's first democratically elected president.

The Algeria-based Al Qaeda franchise, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, claimed responsibility for Monday's attack, in which militants ambushed soldiers, seizing 12.

The US has offered funds and training to Mauritania to help it fight the Al Qaeda-linked group, but cut such aid after the coup.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted a Mauritanian lawmaker as saying the military was confident it would catch the attackers by blocking desert transit points and using air reconnaissance.

While Mauritanian security sources originally said 12 soldiers had been killed in the ambush, they now say the men are likely hostages, AFP reported the lawmaker as saying:

"The 12 men, including a captain, are in the hands of the criminals who would undoubtedly try to use them as cover in their escape and for possible ransom demands," [the lawmaker] said.

Experts say the attackers are likely only to be able to travel at night and would have needed at least five days to reach the border with Algeria or Mali.

If that's correct, the militants would not be able to reach the border until Saturday at the earliest.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has claimed responsibility for killing 15 Mauritanian soldiers in a 2005 raid, killing four soldiers and four French tourists in December 2007, and attacking the Israeli Embassy in Mauritania last February.

After the Aug. 6 coup, the group called for a full-scale "holy war" to turn Mauritania – seen as a US ally in the global war on terror – into an Islamic state.

Reuters reported that Monday's attack has renewed concerns that the militants could destabilize the region.

The latest ambush has revived fears that Al Qaeda's North Africa branch, which has carried out bloody bomb attacks in the Maghreb, may be extending its operations further southwards into sub-Saharan Africa, which is a source of crude oil to the West.

Western donors like the United States and Europe, which have condemned the coup against Abdallahi, had been supporting the civilian official Mauritanian president

in his efforts to tackle what appeared to be a growing threat of Islamic extremist violence.

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