Mauritanian forces exchange fire with group accused of killing tourists

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Mauritanian security forces have surrounded a group of men believed to be linked to the killing of four French tourists in December, police and witnesses said Monday. An Associated Press reporter on the scene saw the bodies of two men killed during sporadic shooting that has lasted at least two hours on the eastern outskirts of the Islamic nation's capital. The dead included one police officer who was transferred to a local hospital and the body of one of the gunmen in civilian clothes who lay outside the surrounded house Monday.