http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/319113/1/.htmlMauritanian police hunt killers of French tourists
Posted: 25 December 2007 2121 hrs
NOUAKCHOTT : Mauritanian police detained two more people and set up roadblocks near the Senegalese border on Tuesday as they hunted the killers of four French tourists, security sources said.
A massive manhunt was underway for three men suspected of shooting dead the tourists, including three male members of the same family, and wounding a fifth in the southern town of Aleg on Monday, they said.
The suspected killers were believed to have fled in the direction of the Senegalese border to the south.
A taxi driver told police he had taken the suspects to the border town of Bogue, 50 kilometres south of Aleg, on Monday night.
Checkpoints had been thrown up along the border and aircraft were reportedly scouring the area after the suspects' car was found abandoned near the scene of the crime.
Two suspects were detained for questioning on Tuesday in addition to the three detained on Monday, one of whom was later released, local Governor Sidi Mouloud Ould Brahim told national radio.
"Two (more) suspects have been arrested and the investigation is going on to get our hands on these criminals," he said.
He earlier told Radio France International that a military plane was involved in the manhunt.
"We have sent a military aircraft to scour the region. We have stepped up security around all exit points," he said.
A team of specialist Moroccan investigators had also arrived to help track the killers, the state prosecutor said.
Two men arrested on Monday were still being interrogated but a female detained with them had been released, security sources said. It was not clear how they were suspected of being involved in the shooting.
The tourists - four male relatives and a male friend - were on a driving trek between Paris and Burkina Faso and were on their way to Mali when they were attacked, the French foreign ministry said in Paris.
Earlier reports indicated two children had been killed but the ministry said the victims included two adult children of an elderly man who was shot in the leg and wounded. His brother and a family friend were also killed.
"They were en route to Mali when they were surprised by an armed group comprised of three people who demanded money without success before attacking them in a barbaric fashion," a ministry spokesman said.
The father, aged in his 70s, initially had been treated in a Nouakchott hospital but was later transferred to Dakar, diplomatic sources said.
The attack in the former French colony in north-west Africa happened as the family was preparing to have a picnic lunch by the side of the road, police and officials said.
Ould Brahim said the tourists had been followed by their attackers for some time.
"It seems that these French people were followed after they changed 50 euros (dollars) at the bank," he said, adding that the killers trailed them in a car until they stopped for lunch by the side of the road just outside Aleg.
"They demanded money, and were told that there was none. They opened fire."
In a telephone conversation Monday night, Mauritanian President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi told French President Nicolas Sarkozy his country would do "everything to catch" the attackers.
The Mauritanian interior ministry said in a statement that the attack "contradicts our values of tolerance."
Although anyone venturing outside the capital is advised to travel in convoys of at least two vehicles, attacks of this kind in the Aleg region are very rare.
The roads in the northeast desert region of the country, the border area with Mali, where Tuaregs and Islamist groups are active, are considered less safe. - AFP/ms/de
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