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| Africa |
| Top soldiers sacked in Mauritania after coup |
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by
Reuters Reporter, 22 June 2003
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15:32:20
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The chief of staff of Mauritania’s air force and another senior military official have been sacked in the latest round of dismissals within the army since this month’s failed coup, officials said.
Colonel Mohamed Ould Salikou came from the same eastern region as many of the insurgents who tried to topple President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya on June 8. Members of the air force took part in an attack on the presidential palace.
The officials said late on Saturday the chief of military engineering, Lieutenant Colonel Abdi Ould Ahmed Tfeil, had also been fired.
Several top military and political officials have been dismissed and some held by police over alleged links with the man accused of having led the coup, Saleh Ould Hanenna.
Hanenna, a former officer who was kicked out of the army after being accused of stirring discontent over Mauritania’s links with Israel, is on the run.
The motives behind the coup remain unclear, but it came after the arrests of Islamic leaders and Baath party activists sympathetic to Saddam Hussein following the US war in Iraq.
The largely desert country, which straddles black and Arab Africa, established full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1999 — only the third Arab League state to do so. |
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