Mauritanian prosecutors said on Wednesday they suspected Islamic extremists allied to al Qaeda were the killers of four French tourists gunned down when they stopped for a Christmas Eve picnic.
After initially suggesting robbery as the motive for Monday's attack outside Aleg, 250 km (150 miles) south-east of the capital Nouakchott, investigators said they were hunting three killers, two of whom were suspected Islamic militants.
They said the attack could be a high-profile strike by Islamist extremists aimed at Europeans at Christmas. It comes 12 days before the January 5 start of the Lisbon-Dakar rally that will cross Mauritania.
Mauritanian President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi condemned the killings of the foreigners. It raised fears that al Qaeda-linked terrorist attacks already experienced by Algeria and Morocco could spread southwards to Mauritania, Senegal and Mali. A presidential spokesman said the murders were a shock in a country he said represented "tolerance and moderate Islam".
"The authorities are doing everything they can and are alert to ensure peace and security for Mauritanians and foreigners, be they residents or visitors," Abdallahi Mamadou Ba told Reuters. Three turbanned gunmen fired automatic weapons at the picnicking French at a roadside halt on Monday, killing four of them outright and wounding a fifth.
The 73-year-old survivor was shot in the leg. After treatment in neighbouring Senegal he was evacuated by private plane to Lyon in France on Wednesday in a stable condition. His two adult sons, his brother and a family friend were killed.
Police said the three suspected killers fled southwards to Bogue, a town on Mauritania's southern Senegal River border with neighbouring Senegal. Mauritanian and Senegalese security forces were searching both sides of the frontier. Mauritania's prosecution service said two of the men being sought were "young Mauritanians suspected of belonging to extremist Salafist groups".
"CLEANSING" REGION:
This reference pointed to an Algeria-based Islamic militant group formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which is accused of attacks in North Africa.
The GSPC has changed its name to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb after allying itself to mainstream al Qaeda. In September, al Qaeda's second in command urged north African Muslims to "cleanse" their land of Spaniards and French.
Monday's killings have shaken the largely desert former French colony, which straddles Arab and black Africa. Authorities have been trying to develop desert tourism.
"This is not in our history nor our traditions, nor does it serve Islam," Mauritania's leading Islamic politician Jemil Mohamed Ould Mansour said. "It brings shame on Mauritania that peaceful tourists lose their lives on our soil," he added.
Prosecutors said five people had been arrested so far in the investigation, including a man known as Abou Said, previously convicted of belonging to a "terrorist group". He was suspected of having organised cars used by the killers.
Mauritania is generally peaceful, but past governments, fearing the kind of al Qaeda-linked terrorist attacks which have hit neighbours Morocco and Algeria in recent years, have carried out several roundups and trials of suspected Islamic extremists.