MAURITANIA: Clashes with suspected Al Qaeda militants

North Africa has become a hotbed of Islamic extremism. Deadly clashes erupted Monday evening between armed forces and a group of suspected Islamists in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott.

The Arabic TV channel Al Jazeera showed footage of Mauritanian forces shooting with assault rifles at a building where the militants were apparently holed up.

According to news agencies and Arab satellite news channels, the gun battle led to the killing of a number of policemen and Islamic militants.

One of the Islamists believed to have perished in the shoot-out was the infamous Sidi Ould Sidna, a 20-year-old Al Qaeda suspect who was accused of the assassination of four French tourists in the south of the country last December.

The man had managed to escape from court last week, setting policemen in his pursuit all over the capital.

Since the assassination of the tourists, fears of Al Qaeda cells active in Morocco and Algeria expanding to this Muslim North African country have increased.

Fears of terrorism had a negative impact on the tourism-driven economy of this conservative and impoverished country.

Here's Nouri Luhemiya, a blogger who writes about international relations between the West, North Africa and the Middle East at The Moor Next Door:

Recent terrorist attacks have caused the Mauritanian economy to slow, with security concerns leading to a lack of confidence from international investors and a slowing of the tourism industry. The combination of economic instability and the widely held perception of the country's democratically elected president, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, as a weakling could lead to major changes over the next year in Mauritania.

And here's a documentary aired recently on the English-language France 24 news channel about the rise of Islamic militancy in Mauritania:

— Raed Rafei in Beirut

Photo: Mauritanian security forces today prepared to storm a house where Islamist militants were thought to have been holed up after a gun battle on Monday in the north of Nouakchott, the capital. Security source said that the Islamist militants escaped before the house was stormed. Credit: AHMED ELHADJ/AFP/Getty Images