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10/03/2004:

"Gunmen Attack Mauritania Security Chief's Home"

NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) - Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the house of Mauritania's national security chief early Sunday, police in the coup-prone West African country said.

``They got out of a Mercedes and shot at the house. They machine-gunned three vehicles in front of the building,'' a police officer on the scene said.

Deddahi Ould Abdallahi, director of national security and a close confidant of the president, told Reuters he was not at home at when the shooting happened at around 0200 GMT. He said his wife and children were in the house but were not injured.

``Apparently it was a car which did not have number plates with four people on board who shot at my house,'' Ould Abdallahi said in front of the single storey villa, surrounded by around a dozen uniformed and other plain clothes police officers.

The Islamic republic, a poor, mostly desert country that hopes to get rich from offshore oil, said in August it had foiled an attempted putsch.

Full Article: Reuters

'Coup prone' huh? Like hurricane-prone, disease prone...inexplicable, a baffling force of nature...this is how we are encouraged to see Africa.