Yesterday’s shooting attack on Israel’s embassy in Mauritania may not have been a shooting attack on Israel’s embassy at all, according to Mauritanian defense officials.
No sirree. Apparently the Israeli embassy just happened to be located next to the real target of the attack – a restaurant. And the reason the terrorists fired at the embassy at all was because of those meddling Israeli guards.
Mauritanian security forces have arrested three young men suspected of being involved in the shooting attack against Israel’s embassy in the capital city of Nouakchott on Friday, the al-Jazeera news channel reported.
Defense officials in Mauritania estimated however that the target of the attack had not been the embassy but rather a restaurant adjacent to it, regularly filled with Western patrons.
According to the officials the information obtained so far does not point to the embassy as being the target. “And proof of this is that none of the assailants pointed his weapon towards it at first, but rather only when the embassy guards opened fire at them,” said the sources.
Additional evidence supporting this theory, they said, was the fact that none of the casualties had been from the embassy, but rather only the restaurant.
Paging Inspector Clouseau…
I am intrigued as to how said defense officials know the terrorists pointed first at the restaurant. Given that the incident apparently occurred within a few seconds, and the terrorists were using automatic weapons, I’m thinking that kind of determination would be extremely difficult to make. Not that this would be proof of their contention anyway. As for the fact that there were no casualties at the embassy, I am assuming that would be more related to the fact that Israeli guards were shooting back.
Of course, it is likely that a restaurant filled with Westerners would also be the target of a suspected Al Qaeda attack, but to believe that an Israeli embassy was not a target is… well …. silly.
