15 dead in attack on military barracks, government blames Islamists

Troop reinforcements were being sped to the remote northeast reaches of Mauritania on Monday after a weekend attack blamed by the government on Islamists left at least 15 soldiers dead and 13 injured.

In the capital Nouakchott, scores of people waited anxiously at the military hospital for news of family after the assault at the remote Lemghayti military barracks in the far northeast near the border with Mali and Algeria.

Moving into crisis mode, Prime Minister Sghaier Ould Mbareck called in the leaders of the political opposition to discuss what the government claims was an attack by Algerian Islamists.

Defence Minister Baba Ould Sidi has placed the armed forces on high alert and sent troop reinforcements to the area.

At a specially convened press conference on Sunday, Ould Sidi deplored the "assassination in cold blood of Mauritanian soldiers by the attackers."

He said that between five and nine of the attackers were also killed.

So far, the only information on what took place in Lemghayti comes from government planes that have flown over the barracks that normally house 780 soldiers. The government has warned that the death toll could be higher.

According to the government, attackers struck the barracks in the small hours of Saturday morning. Some of the soldiers had had their throats slit, the government said.

The government blamed the Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat (GSPC), linked by the US military to Al Qaeda - the Islamic organisation responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001.

The United States later this month is to begin a multi-million dollar anti-terrorism training programme in nine west and north African countries considered fertile ground for radical Islamic combatants.

The programme will cost the US government US $100 million each year for five years.

The Mauritanian authorities over the last three months have cracked down against Islamists accused of links with radical Islamic movements.

But critics have accused President Maaouiya Ould Taya of targeting government opponents under the guise of a US-inspired war on terror.

Jemil Ould Mansour, a Mauritanian Islamist leader who is on the run from the Mauritanian authorities, denied that Islamists were responsible for the attack and called for calm in a statement issued on an Islamist website.

"This is not the time for revenge and wrongdoings. All such action must stop to prevent such acts finding fertile ground to be repeated in our country," said Ould Mansour.

Mauritania's northeastern border region is inaccessible and notoriously difficult to police. Traders using caravans of camels roam the region where smuggling is made easy by the remote and hostile nature of the terrain.