Gunmen attack Israeli embassy in Mauritania

Gunmen opened fire on the Israeli embassy in Mauritania early on Friday, wounding at least three people including a French woman outside a nearby nightclub, officials and witnesses said.

No embassy staff were hurt in the shooting, the Israeli ambassador in Nouakchott said.

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, located in a tree-lined street of the dusty Mauritanian capital.

The attack followed recent public calls by political parties in Mauritania, an Islamic Republic which straddles black and Arab Africa, for the government to sever diplomatic ties with Israel. The western Saharan country is one of the few Arab League states to have relations with the Jewish state.

The gunmen also sprayed bullets at a nightclub about 50 metres (yards) from the embassy on the same street, injuring its two Mauritanian owners and a French woman, Nouakchott's governor Mohamed Lemine Ould Zeine told Reuters.

The woman was injured when bullets hit the car she was in and she was taken to hospital by a companion.

In footage shown by Al Arabiya TV, the embassy appeared to be undamaged, but there were three bullet holes in the windscreen of a vehicle parked outside.

The shooting stoked further fears of an upsurge of Islamic extremist violence in Mauritania following the killings there in December by suspected Mauritanian al Qaeda militants of four French tourists and a number of government soldiers.

SECURITY FEARS

Armed Mauritanian soldiers on Friday sealed off the Israeli embassy building, which is already protected by concrete blocks built across the road. These and the guards appeared to have prevented the attackers from approaching further.

"At 2:20 this morning, there was shooting at the Israeli embassy in Nouakchott. All the embassy staff, Israeli and Mauritanian, are safe," Israeli ambassador Boaz Bismuth told Reuters.

The latest shooting came just weeks after the 2008 Lisbon-Dakar rally, which was due to have passed through Mauritania, was cancelled due to a security alarm caused by the two December attacks.

Islamic militants from al Qaeda's North African branch claimed responsibility for the killings last month of the Mauritanian soldiers. Two suspected killers of the French tourists, who also confessed to being al Qaeda members, are being held after they were extradited from Guinea-Bissau.

"I have received many phone calls from Mauritanian friends who are very concerned. That is the only positive thing in a very sad night," Bismuth said.

"It only happened a few hours ago, but a shooting on a foreign embassy is a very serious incident."

Calls for Mauritanian President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi to sever relations with Israel have increased as public anger in Mauritania grew over recent events in Gaza, which is under an Israeli-led blockade.