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“I
would like to extend my heartfelt thanks for all those officers
and soldiers who crushed the coup,” Taya
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Additional
Reporting By Abdouti Ould Aal, IOL Mauritania Correspondent
NOUAKCHOTT,
June 9 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Mauritanian President
Maaouiya Ould Taya announced late Monday that an attempted coup d’etat
was put down by loyal troops.
The
president went on state Television, the first time he had addressed the
nation since the putsch was launched early Sunday, around 3:00 pm (1500
GMT) to say the bid by "officers of the national army" had
been quashed.
“I
would like to extend my heartfelt thanks for all those officers and
soldiers who crushed the coup,” Aljazeera quoted the president as
saying.
Residents
drove through downtown Nouakchott blasting their horns and waving
portraits of Ould Taya to celebrate the end of the foiled 36-hour coup
after fresh fighting that had broken out at
dawn in the northwest African city fizzled out, Agence France-Presse (AFP)
reported.
His
government had already announced overnight that the putsch had been put
down.
But
fighting broke out anew early Monday between Ould Taya's backers and
mutineers who had holed up at the headquarters of the gendarmerie --
police administered by the defence ministry.
Monday's
fighting broke out when government forces opened fire on mutineers as
they tried to slip out of the gendarmerie building at 6 am (0600 GMT), a
government source said. It continued for about four hours.
‘Not
Islamic’
Meanwhile,
Mauritanian political sources familiar with the incident strenuously
denied that the coup was Islamic-oriented, noting that it came in
response to the latest wave of arrests of Muslim scholars in the Islamic
country.
On
May 24, the Mauritanian Center for Human Rights, The Public Mauritanian
Front, The Afro-Arab Committee for Salvation and The Mauritanian
Movement for Democracy and Citizenship called in Paris for protesting
against the escalation of the detention
campaign - held by the Mauritanian government days after Casablanca
explosions - against Islamic activists, especially (opposition) Muslim Brotherhood.
Speaking
to IslamOnline.net, the sources said that the putschists tried to make
use of the state of dissatisfaction among different segments of the
Mauritanian people with such detention campaigns.
The
Mauritanian media tried over the past few weeks to calm down the furious
public by alleging that the detention campaigns were aimed primarily at
“curbing terrorism,” but to no avail.
IOL
learnt that the putsch was masterminded by Salah Ould Hnana, a former
colonel sacked from the Mauritanian army.
Ould
Hnana was said to have worked with accomplices in army tank units and
the air force to launch the abortive bid.
Among
the putschists were Ould Al-Ezwani, a commanding officer an armored
brigade which started the coup and Ould Azntagi, the commander of the
sixth military zone responsible for the protection of the capital.
Mauritania
is due to hold elections in November, and Ould Taya, who has ruled since
coming to power in a coup in 1984, will run for a third term.
His
regime undertook at the end of the 1990s to strengthen ties with the
United States, going even further down that road after the September 11
attacks of 2001.
Mauritania
also established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1999, bringing
stern criticism from some Arab states and opponents to the move within
the desert country.
