Mauritanian ex-president Abdallahi is dead

Mauritania’s former president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, the West African state’s first democratically elected president, died overnight, his family members and the president’s office said on Monday. The politician died at a private clinic in the capital Nouakchott after suffering heart complications, according to his relatives. Born in 1938, Abdallahi became the first democratically elected head of state in Mauritania in April 2007. But he only governed for 15 months before Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, a general, deposed him in a military coup. — AFP