3 Mauritanians charged in tourist deaths

Prosecutors charged three Mauritanian men Sunday with belonging to an al-Qaida-linked terror organization and murdering four French tourists who were gunned down on a roadside in this Islamic nation in December.

Two of the men were arrested this month at a hotel in Guinea-Bissau and extradited to Mauritania, and a third is still on the run, said top public prosecutor Ahmed Ould Abdalla.

The two arrested men were identified as Sidi Ould Sidna, alias Abou Jendel, and Mohamed Ould Sidi Chabarnou. Authorities are still searching for Maarouve Ould Habib, Abdalla said.

Each faces the death penalty if found guilty.

Police in Guinea-Bissau had said Sidna and Chabarnou, both in their 20s, had acknowledged participating in the killings.

All three suspects are believed to belong to al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, an Algerian-based network affiliated with Osama bin Laden's global terror organization, Abdalla said.

Police say three assailants attacked the group of five tourists, including several members of the same family, with automatic weapons fire as they ate breakfast on the side of a highway near Aleg, Mauritania, on Dec. 24. The four, including two children, were killed on the spot, while a fifth tourist — an adult man — survived the attack and was flown to his hometown in France for treatment.

The scale of the attack and the fact that authorities in Mauritania blamed a terror sleeper cell linked with al-Qaida led the French organizers of the historic Dakar Rally to cancel the trans-Saharan race, which was to have taken place last month.

Al-Qaida-in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for an attack Friday on the Israeli embassy in Mauritania, describing it as response to the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, in a statement carried by a militant Web site Sunday.

Early on Friday, at least one gunman opened fire on the embassy, setting off a gunbattle with guards that wounded three bystanders, including French citizens. No embassy staff were wounded.

"In this blessed raid that has been carried out by the champions of al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, targeting the Israeli embassy in Nouakchott on Friday morning ... the mujahideen have attacked it with the fire of their weapons," the statement said.

"This attack comes at a time when the bastard Jews are tormenting our brothers in Palestine with an unjustified siege," said the statement, which appeared on a Web site that regularly carries messages from Islamist extremist groups.

The Arabic satellite channel al-Jazeera reported the al-Qaida claim Saturday.

The statement also threatened Israeli Ambassador Boaz Bizmuth, saying "don't get happy with your survival this time, because the quiver is still full of arrows and remember that you will be in desperate need to survive each time."

In February 2007, al-Qaida number two, Ayman al-Zawahri released a videotape calling for an attack on the embassy in Mauritania, marking one of the first times that Mauritania has become the focus of interest for the militant group.

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Associated Press Writer Paul Schemm contributed to this story from Cairo, Egypt.