Hamadou Tidiane Sy
9 April 2008
Dakar — Police in Mauritania raided early Tuesday morning a block of apartments in a northern suburb of Nouakchott, in a bid to arrest alleged Islamists who the day before put a fierce resistance to the security forces killing at least one of them.
A second person was reported dead during the clashes on Monday evening, in what appears as a continuation of last year's upsurge of violence attributed to "Salafist" groups (Islamic extremists), allegedly linked to Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.
Tuesday's events were the latest incidents involving those supposed extremist Muslim militants.
After the early morning raid, the police was to realise, that the house it has targeted and circled all night in the affluent northern suburb of Tevragh Zein was unoccupied, witnesses in Nouakchott told the Nation correspondent in Dakar.
It was unclear whether the alleged Islamist militants fled overnight or if the house was already empty when the heavily armed security forces decided to organise its siege on Monday night, after the violent clashes of the day before.
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