Gunmen attack Israel embassy in Mauritania, 3 hurt

(Adds details)

By Daniel Flynn

NOUAKCHOTT, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Gunmen opened fire on Israel's embassy in Mauritania on Friday, wounding three bystanders including a French woman.

The attack followed appeals by political parties for President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi to break off diplomatic relations with Israel to reflect anger in Mauritania over events in Gaza, which is under an Israeli blockade.

Israel's ambassador said no embassy staff were hurt in the shooting in the early hours of Friday, which followed two attacks in late December by suspected al Qaeda militants in the former French colony straddling the western end of the Sahara.

Some witnesses said the attackers, who numbered at least three, shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest) as they exchanged fire with guards at the fortified embassy in a tree-lined street of the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott.

Mauritania is one of three Arab countries to have relations with Israel, along with Egypt and Jordan.

"This is very sad. The relation between Israel and Mauritania is a symbol of peace," Israeli Ambassador Boaz Bismuth told Reuters.

He said bullets had hit the embassy building. "A shooting on a foreign embassy is a very serious incident."

Guards outside the embassy exchanged fire for several minutes with the gunmen, who sprayed bullets at a nightclub about 50 metres (yards) away before fleeing into the darkness.

The French woman was hit in a car outside the club, one of few places in Nouakchott to serve alcohol, and was treated in a local hospital before being flown to France.

The club owner and his son, both Mauritanians, were also wounded, the government said in a statement. A French diplomat, who asked not to be identified, said both had dual nationality.

Foreign Minister Mohamed Saleck Ould Mohamed Lemine summoned Ambassador Boaz to express Mauritania's regret over the attack.

Israel radio said a defence official left for Mauritania on Friday to check security measures and Israeli embassies around the world had been placed on alert.



SECURITY FEARS

The attack revived concern over signs of increased Islamic militancy. In late December, suspected Mauritanian members of al Qaeda's North African branch killed four French tourists and several soldiers in two separate attacks.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) of Algeria, claimed responsibility for the soldiers' killings.

U.S.-based IntelCenter, which monitors Islamist groups' Web messages, says al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri called for attacks on Israel's embassy in Mauritania a year ago.

"There are people who don't want an Israeli embassy here, but it's the duty of those people to ask for Israel to leave in a democratic way," said Ahmoud Ould Mahmoud, a local resident.

The 2008 Lisbon-Dakar rally, which was due to pass through Mauritania, was cancelled early in January over security fears following the two December killings. President Abdallahi has denied the existence of a terrorist cell in Mauritania.

Two suspected killers of the French tourists, who also confessed to being al Qaeda members, are being held in Nouakchott after they were extradited from Guinea-Bissau. (Additional reporting by Gabriela Matthews and Ibrahima Sylla in Nouakchott and Daniel Wallis in Addis Ababa; Writing Daniel Flynn and Pascal Fletcher; editing by Alistair Thomson and Robert Woodward)