FACTBOX: Soldiers seize Mauritania president

(Reuters) - Presidential guardsmen seized Mauritanian President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi in a coup d'etat on Wednesday, the president's daughter Amal Mint Cheikh Abdallahi said.

A presidency source said soldiers had also seized the prime minister and the interior minister.

Here are some key facts about Mauritania:

GEOGRAPHY: Most of Mauritania is desert. At 1,025,220 sq km (395,800 sq miles), it is almost twice as big as former colonial power France, but has little more than 800 km (500 miles) of paved roads.

POPULATION: Almost all Mauritania's 3.1 million people are Muslims and it is officially an Islamic republic.

ETHNICITY: Moors of Arab-Berber origin form about 70 percent of the population. Most black African inhabitants are from the Fulani and Soninke ethnic groups.

LANGUAGE: Arabic and French are the official languages. Mauritania's Moors speak Bassanya, an Arab dialect; Fulani and Sarakole are also spoken in the south.

RELIGION: Islam is the official and predominant religion (99.5 percent Sunni).

POLITICS: President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi took office in 2007 after winning elections marking the return of civilian rule to the West Saharan Islamic state.

ECONOMY: Main products are fish, livestock and iron ore, although offshore oil reserves promise to revolutionize the economy.

-- Mauritania began producing crude oil in early 2006, forecasting output of 75,000 barrels per day (bpd) from the offshore Chinguetti field opened by Australia's Woodside and now operated by Malaysia's Petronas.

-- Difficulties extracting the oil from the field's complex reservoir structure have resulted in Chinguetti's output falling below 15,000 bpd. But other companies, including French major Total are prospecting in other parts of the large, mostly desert, country and hopes are high.

-- The IMF reported in February 2008 that more than $2 billion in donor aid pledged the previous December should help Mauritania's economy grow by more than 4.5 percent in 2008 as it emerged from a slowdown in 2007.

-- The Saharan state's economic growth slowed to 0.9 percent in 2007 due to a sharp fall in output from the fledgling oil sector while the non-oil economy performed well, growing 5.7 percent.