| Unidentified assailants have opened fire on the house of Mauritania's national security chief. The attack on Sunday came less than two months after the West African country said it had foiled an attempted coup. "They got out of a Mercedes and shot at the house. They machinegunned three vehicles in front of the building," a police officer on the scene said. Diddahi Walad Abd Allah, the director of national security and a close confidant of the president, said he was not at home when the shooting happened at about 0200 GMT. He said his wife and children were in the house, but were not hurt. "Apparently it was a car, which did not have number plates, with four people on board who shot at my house," Walad Abd Allah told reporters in front of the single storey villa, surrounded by uniformed and plain-clothes police officers. Police were stopping taxis around the dusty capital - most of which are Mercedes cars - for spot checks, residents said. |