The President of Mauritania, who was shot and wounded on Saturday in what was described as an accident, may have been deliberately targeted by militants, it has been claimed.
Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz was “slightly wounded” in the incident late on Saturday when an army unit fired on his convoy as he was returning from a weekend retreat.
Hamdi Mahjoub, the communications minister, said in the aftermath that it was an “accidental shooting”, adding “The army unit did not recognise the presidential convoy”.
But the description contradicts an early account provided to the news agency AFP, by an unidentified security source, who said the president had been “directly targeted” in an attack by an unknown gunman in a car.
President Abdel Aziz appeared on state television on Sunday from his hospital bed to appeal for calm and to downplay the incident.
“I want to reassure everyone about my state of health after this incident committed by error”, he said.
Local media reported that he flew to Paris shortly after the televised statement for further medical treatment.
The president, an army general and commander of the Republican Guard, rose to power in 2008 after overthrowing Mauritania’s first democratically elected president. Three years earlier, he had helped orchestrate a coup that ended the 24-year regime of Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, who served first as prime minister then as president.
A month before the 2009 election, Mr Abdel Aziz stepped down from the presidency in a move designed to show the ruling military regime’s resolve to allow a civilian government to take shape. He vied for the presidency and won, despite allegations by opposition groups of fraud in what they termed an “electoral coup”.
Mr Abdel Aziz’s government has taken a hard line against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group bolstered by the turmoil in neighbouring Mali that followed a coup there in March. The Mauritanian army had launched numerous military operations on Islamist bases in Mali, but the rebellion has split that country in two, leaving much of it in the hands of armed groups linked to al-Qaeda.