NOUAKCHOTT—Mauritanian police detained several suspects and scoured the south of the Saharan country on Tuesday in a hunt for three gunmen who killed four picnicking French tourists in a Christmas Eve attack, officials said.
Authorities initially said robbery appeared to be the motive behind Monday's shooting at Aleg, 250 km (160 miles) southeast of the capital Nouakchott, in which turbanned gunmen armed with automatic rifles killed three members of a family and a friend.
A fifth member of the French group was injured and survived,
Police had not ruled out the possibility the attack was the work of Islamic militants seeking to carry out a high-profile strike on Europeans at Christmas, 12 days before the January start of the Lisbon-Dakar rally that will cross Mauritania.
The head of the French family attacked, a man in his seventies, was shot in the leg and was taken to neighbouring Senegal for treatment. His two adult sons, his brother and a family friend were killed.
"I think this was an attack by bandits because it seems they were following the French when they went to a bank (in Aleg) to change 50 euros," the local prefect of the Brakna region, Sidi Mouloud Ould Brahim, told Radio France International (RFI).
When the French later stopped their vehicles for a picnic lunch under trees by the roadside 10 km (6 miles) from Aleg, the assailants approached in a black Mercedes. Three turbanned men got out and demanded money. "The French replied they had none ... and the men used their weapons," Ould Brahim said.
But one security source, who asked not to be named, said the vehicles of the attacked group had not been touched, which suggested robbery may not have been the motive. But no group had so far claimed responsibility for the attack.
The authorities, who found the black Mercedes abandoned in Aleg, had launched a manhunt along the southern border with Senegal after reports that the attackers had fled by taxi late on Monday to the frontier town of Bogue on the Senegal River.
Police set up road blocks and detained a number of people, including several women, for questioning, but some were later released.
Militant Link?
Local media said the detained included people connected to or related to suspected members of an Algeria-based Islamic militant group formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which now calls itself 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.
The shooting has shocked the former French colony which straddles Arab and black Africa on the Sahara's western fringe.
Authorities have been hoping to expand a nascent desert tourism industry and the attack raised fears about security during the Jan 5-20 Lisbon-Dakar rally which will drive through Morocco and Mauritania and finish in Senegal.
"This is a reprehensible act that is unheard of in our country, which is known for its tolerance, stability and security for tourists," the head of Mauritania's Tourism Office, Mohamed Abdallahi Ould Khattra, told RFI.
Mauritanian President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi had spoken about the attack with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy and assured him that everything possible would be done to catch the killers.
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