Mauritanian security forces detain president in apparent coup d'etat

Presidential guardsmen seized Mauritanian President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi in a coup d'etat on Wednesday, the president's daughter Amal Mint Cheikh Abdallahi said.

"The security agents of the BASEP (Presidential Security Battalion) came to our home around 9:20 A.M. (0920 GMT) and took away my father," she told Reuters.

Soldiers gathered at the presidential palace after Abdallahi replaced senior army officers earlier on Wednesday during a political crisis in the northwest African country that is one of the continent's newest oil producers. Abdallahi won elections last year and took over from a military junta that had ruled since it toppled President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya in a bloodless coup in 2005.

Largely desert Mauritania, a former French colony of more than 3 million people, straddles black and Arab Africa.

Abdallahi replaced one government in May following criticism over the government's response to soaring food prices and to attacks over the last year carried out by Al-Qaida's north African arm.

But the new government resigned last month in the face of a proposed no-confidence vote. A new one was formed but without the opposition Union of Forces for Progress (UFP) and Islamist Tawassoul parties which had formed part of the previous government.