Terrorism in Saudi Arabia has mainly been attributed to Islamic extremists. Their targets included foreign civilians—Westerners affiliated with its oil-based economy—as well as Saudi Arabian civilians and security forces. Anti-Western attacks have occurred in Saudi Arabia dating back to 1995. Saudi Arabia itself has been accused of funding terrorism in other countries, including Syria.
Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the government of Iran has been accused by several countries of training, financing, and providing weapons and safe havens for non-state militant actors, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and other Palestinian groups. These groups are designated terrorist groups by a number of countries and international bodies; however, Iran considers such groups to be "national liberation movements" with a right to self-defense in the face of Israeli military occupation.
The insurgency in the Maghreb refers to the ongoing Islamist insurgency in the Maghreb region of North Africa that followed on from the end of the Algerian Civil War in 2002. The Algerian militant group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) allied itself with al-Qaeda to eventually become al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Algerian and other Maghreb governments fighting the militants have worked with the United States and the United Kingdom since 2007, when Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara began.
The 2007 killing of French tourists in Mauritania happened on 24 December 2007. The attack happened near Aleg, 250 km east of the capital Nouakchott.
In December 1984, Haidallah was deposed by Colonel Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, who, while retaining tight military control, relaxed the political climate. Ould Taya moderated Mauritania's previous pro-Algerian stance, and re-established ties with Morocco during the late 1980s. He deepened these ties during the late 1990s and early 2000s as part of Mauritania's drive to attract support from Western states and Western-aligned Arab states. Mauritania has not rescinded its recognition of Polisario's Western Saharan exile government, and remains on good terms with Algeria. Its position on the Western Sahara conflict has been, since the 1980s, one of strict neutrality.
The 2008 U.S. embassy attack in Yemen in Sana'a, Yemen on September 17, 2008, resulted in 18 deaths and 16 injuries. Six attackers, six Yemeni police and six civilians were killed. This attack was the second occurring in the same year, after a mortar attack earlier in 2008 on March 18 missed the embassy and instead hit a nearby girls' school. Islamic Jihad of Yemen, an al Qaeda affiliate, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, or al-Qaeda in Lebanon, is a Sunni Islamist militant group, and al-Qaeda's branch in Lebanon. The group, which began operating in 2009, was founded by Saudi Saleh Al-Qaraawi and has networks in various countries, mainly in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
The 2009 Nouakchott suicide bombing occurred in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, on August 8, 2009, outside the embassy of France. It was the first instance of a suicide bombing in the history of Mauritania. The bombing killed the perpetrator and wounded three people.
Al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is an Islamist militant organization that aims to overthrow the Algerian government and institute an Islamic state. To that end, it is currently engaged in an insurgency campaign in the Maghreb and Sahel regions.
Many terrorist attacks have occurred in Kenya during the 20th and 21st centuries. In 1980, the Jewish-owned Norfolk hotel was attacked by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In 1998, the US embassy was bombed in Nairobi, as was the Israeli-owned Paradise hotel in 2002 in Mombasa. In 2013, the Somali jihadist group al-Shabaab killed 67 people at Nairobi's Westgate Shopping Mall. There have also been many other attacks.
Israel and Mauritania relations refers to the historic and current bilateral relationship between Israel and Mauritania. In 1999, Mauritania became the third member of the Arab League—after Egypt and Jordan—to recognize Israel as a sovereign state. The two countries established full diplomatic relations in October 1999. However, as a response to the Gaza War (2008–09), relations were frozen since 2009.
Mokhtar Belmokhtar, also known as Khalid Abu al-Abbas, The One-Eyed, Nelson, and The Uncatchable, is an Algerian leader of the group Al-Murabitoun, former military commander of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, smuggler and weapons dealer. He was twice convicted and sentenced to death in absentia under separate charges in Algerian courts: in 2007 for terrorism and in 2008 for murder. In 2004, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Algeria for terrorist activities.
The following lists events that happened during 2011 in Mauritania.
On 18 March 2015, two militants attacked the Bardo National Museum in the Tunisian capital city of Tunis, and took hostages. Twenty-one people, mostly European tourists, were killed at the scene, and an additional victim died ten days later. Around fifty others were injured. The two gunmen, Tunisian citizens Yassine Labidi and Saber Khachnaoui, were killed by police. Police treated the event as a terrorist attack.
On 20 November 2015, Islamist militants took 170 hostages and killed 20 of them in a mass shooting at the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, the capital city of Mali. Malian commandos along with Kyle Morgan, a special mission unit operator from the US Army’s Combat Application Group, commonly referred to as Delta Force, assaulted the hotel and freed the surviving hostages. Al-Mourabitoun claimed that it carried out the attack "in cooperation with" al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb; an al Qaeda member confirmed that the two groups cooperated in the attack.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Nouakchott, Mauritania.
The 2005 El Mreiti base attack occurred on 4 June 2005 when militants from the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, a predecessor group of AQIM, attacked a remote army garrison in western Mauritania, killing eighteen government troops and capturing a significant amount of weapons. According to a statement released by militants, the attackers surrounded the base and engaged in a battle that lasted several hours, eventually breaching the base, seizing large quantities of weapons and ammunition, and fleeing. The same statement claimed that fifty Mauritanian troops had been killed in the assault. Five GSPC militants, all Algerian nationals, were killed during the battle. The attack was led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian jihadist and veteran of the Soviet–Afghan War. It was one of the first al-Qaeda linked operations to occur on Mauritanian soil and spurred the government of Mauritania to ally with Algeria and Mali in a bid to root out militants in the region.
On 2 March 2018, at least eight heavily armed militants launched an assault on key locations throughout Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso. Targets included the French embassy and the headquarters of Burkina Faso's military.
