The Mauritanian government earlier played down the impact of the 36-hour coup at the weekend, and urged citizens to resume normal life.

Signs of the clashes between troops loyal to the president and the mutineers littered the capital, Nouakchott, -- burnt-out tanks, walls pockmarked with bulletholes, and some areas, such as the immediate surroundings of the presidential palace, cordoned off.

But life had resumed its usual pace a day after the government announced the coup bid had been crushed. Yet the rapid return to normal belied the severity of the crisis from which the pro-Western Islamic republic has just emerged.

State-run media resumed broadcasting on Monday almost as if nothing had happened.

AMI did not give details of the damage to the armed forces headquarters but journalists who went there saw completely devastated offices.

Armed forces chief Colonel Mohamed Lemine Ould N'Diayane was killed in the coup bid.

The identity of the coup leaders, their numbers and the fate of sacked colonel Saleh Ould Hnana, suspected of masterminding the coup, remained a mystery Tuesday.

Ould Hnana was said to have worked with accomplices in army tank units and the air force to launch the abortive bid.

Sources said authorities were trying to assess the human cost of the fighting and the material damage by the end of the week.

No official toll has yet been released by the government for unrest that followed the coup bid, which caught Mauritania off-guard by its suddenness and intensity.

State workers were at their desks Tuesday, although some civil servants found their offices had been looted by convicted criminals whom the mutineers had released from prison as the coup was under way.

Observers interpreted the rapid return to normal as being heavy with messages from the government, the most important of which was that Ould Taya was firmly in control, five months before Mauritanians vote in a presidential election in which their long-time leader has already announced he plans to run.

Another was the strength of the bond between the president and his armed forces, which rallied to Ould Taya to put down the rebellion.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Tuesday expressed his country's "full solidarity with the Mauritanian government and people", in a telephone conversation with Ould Taya, officials in Algiers said. Bouteflika also said that Algeria condemned any anti-constitutional changes.

In the United States, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said: "We're pleased that the attempted coup has failed and that President Taya has regained control."

Algeria and Mauritania are members of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), along with Libya, Morocco and Tunisia.

UMA was founded in 1989 to coordinate the five Maghreb countries' political and economic strategies.

The abortive coup was launched in the early hours of Sunday amid heightened tensions in the Sahara desert country of 2.7 million people, many of them nomads, where the pro-Western position of Ould Taya's government has provoked the ire of some Mauritanians as well as other Arab nations.

At the end of the 1990s, Ould Taya set about strengthening ties with the United States, going even further down that road after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Mauritania's establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel in 1999 also brought stern criticism from some Arab states and from within the country.

Early last month, police here carried out some dozen raids on Islamist groups accused by the government of having "terrorist intentions" and being linked to international fundamentalist movements. Dozens of suspected Islamic extremists were arrested.

About a dozen activists from Mauritania's Baathist movement, which is said to be close to the regime of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, were arrested at the same time.

Nine have since been given suspended three-month prison sentences for setting up a banned organisation.

The weekend's mutineers took advantage of the pervading "fear of terrorist attacks" in Mauritania to sidestep the authorities' security measures and launch their putsch bid, which has highlighted the pressing need to bring the country's perceived "Islamic problem" under control, analysts have said.

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