DAKAR, 8 January 2008 (IRIN) - Aid operations to deliver food and health services in Mauritania are continuing as usual despite heightened concerns about the threat from terrorists associated with al Qaeda who have claimed responsibility for six killings in the country.

On 24 December, suspected al Qaeda militants shot dead four French tourists in Aleg, 250 km south of the capital Nouakchott and close to the Senegal border, prompting a regional manhunt. Three days later on 27 December, three army soldiers were killed in an attack further north.

"There has been no impact. We've maintained our existing security levels in country," Gian Carlo Cirri, World Food Programme (WFP) representative told IRIN, stressing that the agency already had good security mechanisms in place in the country. "We don't know what will happen. We are in a wait and see position."

Mauritania, a 3 million strong country located in the arid Sahel region of West Africa, has suffered a series of natural disasters over the last five years, including drought, locust invasions and floods but has remained peaceful apart from a bloodless military coup in 2006.

Over two thirds of the country's rural population are affected by poverty, according to WFP, and there is a large contingent of UN agencies and NGOs in the country.

Ismael Dieng, a spokesperson for the non-governmental organisation Oxfam, which has humanitarian and development projects throughout the country, said: "Staff are going about their daily operations without any problem and there are no restrictions on movements of people… the programme is running perfectly well."

One of the most important humanitarian operations happening in Mauritania this year is the repatriation of several thousand refugees from Senegal by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).

Didier Laye, UNHCR representative, said: "We already have strict security procedures in place in the whole region, and these have not changed. This was a very specific incident, and has had no impact on the beneficiaries of our programmes. But as always, vigilance is needed."

The Al Qaeda in the Maghreb group has recently issued statements criticising the Paris-Dakar rally which usually crosses Mauritania, prompting the cancellation of the race for the first time in its 30 year history. News reports say analysts believe terrorist groups have been instructed to step up their operations in the region.

On 11 December a car bomb explosion in Algiers, the capital of Mauritania's northern neighbour Algeria and 1,400 miles from Aleg where the attacks on the French tourists took place, destroyed the offices of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and UNHCR and killed 17 UN staffers.

According to the UN staff union, 2007 was one of the deadliest years for UN staff members on record as at least 42 were killed on duty, compared with 32 killed in 2006 and 15 in 2005.

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