Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz flew to Paris for medical treatment on Sunday after soldiers shot at his convoy and wounded him in what the government said was an accident.
Abdel Aziz was wounded on Saturday after an army unit fired on his convoy as he returned to the capital Nouakchott from a weekend retreat.
The government played down the incident, saying the 55-year-old was only “slightly wounded” and that the shooting was an accident as the soldiers didn’t realise that they convoy was his.
“This was an accidental shooting on the presidential convoy as it returned to Nouakchott. The army unit did not recognise the presidential convoy,” Communications Minister Hamdi Mahjoub said in remarks on national television. A security source had earlier told AFP that the president had been directly targeted.
On Sunday, the president flew to Paris for medical treatment after undergoing an operation at a military hospital to remove a “bullet from his body,” a security source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The source did not specify where the bullet had lodged but said none of his vital organs had been hit and “his life is not in danger.”
Unconfirmed media reports in Nouakchott said variously that Abdel Aziz had been hit in the arm and/or the abdomen.
Communications Minister Mahjoub had sought to reassure about Abdel Aziz’s health in his televised remarks.
“The Mauritanian people can be reassured, the president is fine… He was slightly wounded, and he got out of the vehicle unassisted upon arrival at the hospital, where he walked in without difficulty,” he said.
But earlier, a security source told AFP that Abdel Aziz was hit in the arm by a bullet that an unknown gunman fired at him as he was driving from his weekend retreat in nearby Tweila. The gunman in a car “directly targeted” the head of state, he added, without giving any indications as to the identity of the attacker or the motive. “The president’s life is not in danger, he got out and walked to a military hospital where he received first aid,” the source said.
