French family gunned down in Mauritania
Four members of a French family, including two children, were killed by gunmen during a robbery in eastern Mauritania.
The four were robbed at gunpoint yesterday and then sprayed with bullets, said Mohamed Ould Lemine, the police chief of Aleg, a town 150 miles east of Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott, near where the incident occurred.
The father of the family, identified as Francois Tauler, survived the attack, but was seriously injured, Mr Lemine said.
He identified the four dead as his sons Didier and Gerard Tauler, Jean Celess and Albert Alsen.
Authorities had detained two suspects in Aleg, said a police official. Police were going house to house in Aleg trying to gather information about the crime.
According to Mr Lemine, the family had stopped at a bank in Aleg, where they withdrew a large sum of money before leaving town on a sightseeing expedition. About seven miles outside the town, the family stopped on the side of the road to have a picnic when the gunmen approached.
They demanded money and then opened fire with automatic weapons. The robbers sped off in an old model Mercedes Benz. Police found the car abandoned several hours later.
Such violence is rare in Mauritania, a relatively stable democracy on the far western rim of the Sahara desert.
"The family had come from France for a vacation in Mauritania. The government of Mauritania has presented its condolences to France's government," said Babah Ould Sidi Abdalla, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy said he had spoken to his Mauritanian counterpart by telephone but did not have any details about the circumstances of the incident.
"An investigation has been started to find out exactly what happened," Mr Sarkozy said during a visit to a Paris hospital.
"In the current circumstances, all I can do is confirm this new tragedy and transmit my condolences to the families."
In their phone conversation, Mauritanian president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi told the French leader that "everything would be done" to find the killers, said a statement issued by Mr Sarkozy's office.
