NOUAKCHOTT (AFP) — Unidentified gunmen opened fire early Friday at the Israeli embassy in Mauritania, injuring three bystanders, authorities and witnesses said, amid pressure on Nouakchott to cut ties with Tel-Aviv.
Israel condemned the attack, the first of its kind of its embassy in Mauritania, as "act of terrorism".
Boaz Bismuth, its ambassador there, told AFP "shots were aimed at our embassy from the street" but no staff had been hurt.
Nouakchott's governor, Mohamed Lemine Ould Moulay Zeine, said the overnight attack by at least three gunmen had wounded three French nationals.
Communications Minister Mohamed Vall Ould Cheikh told AFP that three men in a car had carried out the shooting.
"Mauritania strongly condemns this criminal act and will do everything to arrest the authors and bring them to justice," he added.
The attack took place shortly after 2:00 am (0200 GMT), and those wounded were outside a nightclub the VIP, a few metres (yards) from the embassy.
Soldiers secured the area and officials said a probe has begun into the attack, which comes after four French adventure tourists were killed in December by gunmen with suspected Al-Qaeda links.
Two of the injured were hit by stray bullets, including the owner of the VIP and a French woman who had been in a car with a friend.
The woman who works for a non-governmental organisation in Mauritania, was airlifted to France for medical treatment Friday, said a source close to the investigation. Her injuries were not life-threatening, the source added.
One other man suffered a fracture during the panic that followed the shooting.
"It is a clear act of terrorism that entered the long line of attacks that have targeted our diplomatic representation abroad for several years," Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Aryeh Mekel told AFP.
The ministry had sent "specialist security officers" to Nouakchott to study reinforcing security, he added, stressing the importance to Israel of ties with Mauritania.
Together with Egypt and Jordan, it is one of three Arab League nations with which it has full diplomatic relations.
Political pressure has however been increasing within the Islamic republic straddling the Maghreb and black sub-Saharan Africa, to sever the ties it established with the Jewish state in 1999.
Several political parties have long pressed for such a move.
Speaker of parliament, constitutionally the second most important figure after the head of state, Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, called Sunday for the country to "reconsider" its "shameful" relations with the Jewish state following Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who is expected in Mauritania next week, expressed solidarity with Israel and Mauritania in the wake of the attacks.
The US-based IntelCenter, which monitors terrorist activities, reported that Al-Qaeda's Ayman Al-Zawahiri had called on Mauritanians to attack the Israeli embassy in Nouakchott in February last year. The call came in a video released by Al-Qaeda's media mouthpiece, As-Sahab.
"This fits the pattern of al-Qaeda announcing targeting preferences in their public messaging up to a year or more before attacks occur," said IntelCenter CEO Ben Venzke.
According to the US-based service SITE, Al-Zawahiri called in the video for "our people in Mauritania... to make a sincere jihadi stand in the face of the treasonous rulers who recognised Israel and betrayed the Ummah (Islamic world) in one of its most holy places".
Witness Ali Fall, who was in the VIP at the time, told AFP that six men wearing turbans and boubous -- long flowing African gowns -- got out of a vehicle and walked towards the restaurant.
"They said loudly in Arabic 'Let's go' then shouted 'Allah Akbar' (God is Greatest) and opened fire" at the embassy, Fall said.
They left behind two firearms and two grenades, according to the capital's governor.
The embassy guards, Mauritanian soldiers, immediately returned fire and the assailants quickly fled, he said.
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