Mauritania's ousted civilian president, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, formally resigned as part of a power-sharing deal with the nation's military rulers June 27—ending a stalemate that for weeks jeopardized the return to civil rule. Supporters of Abdallahi and coup leader Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz shouted at each other outside the conference center where the civilian president stepped down, but there was no violence. (VOA, June 27)

Three days before the deal was signed, gunmen killed an American teacher in the capital, Nouakchott. The man was reportedly shot several times at close range after he resisted a kidnap attempt. The slaying took place outside a private language and computer school that the deceased ran, at a site overlooking the city's Ksar market and the district's oldest mosque.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb were blamed for the killing of four French tourists in Mauritania in December 2007, and an armed attack on the Israeli embassy in February 2008 that left three left three people wounded. (AFP, June 24)

See our last posts on Mauritania and the the Sahel.

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