NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AP) -- Army officers upset with the president's overtures toward Islamic hard-liners staged a coup in Mauritania on Wednesday, overthrowing the first government to be freely elected in this sprawling desert nation in more than 20 years.
The coup in Africa's newest oil producer took place after the president and prime minister fired the country's top four military officials, reportedly for supporting lawmakers who had accused the president of corruption and disagreed with his reaching out to Islamic hard-liners.
A brief announcement read over state television Wednesday said the new "state council" will be led by presidential guard chief Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, one of the four generals fired earlier in the day. The statement also restored the jobs of the other three generals.
President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi was being held by soldiers at the presidential palace in the capital of Nouakchott, according to presidential spokesman Abdoulaye Mamadouba. Soldiers also detained Prime Minister Yahya Ould Ahmed Waqef, he said.
State radio and television went off the air as the coup began, and witnesses said soldiers were deployed throughout the capital. No violence was reported.
The United States, the European Union and African powerhouses South Africa and Nigeria condemned the coup, as did the African Union, which said it would send an envoy to the Mauritanian capital later this week.
"We call on the military to release the president and the prime minister and to restore the legitimate, constitutional, democratically elected government immediately," said State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos.
EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel said Mauritania's president and prime minister should be quickly released and returned to their posts, and warned that that €156 million ($241 million) in EU aid could be at risk if they are not.
Straddling the western edge of the Sahara desert, Arab-dominated Mauritania, with a population of 3.4 million, has been wracked by more than 10 coups or attempted coups since independence from France in 1960.
While most of its people live on about $5 a day, relatively small oil reserves were discovered in Mauritania in 2006.
One of only three Arab League countries to have diplomatic relations with Israel, Mauritania was rocked in 2007 by back-to-back attacks, including one on the Israeli Embassy in Nouakchott and another that killed four French tourists. The government has blamed the attacks on an Islamic terror cell allied with al Qaeda.
