Under the auspices of military training between the United States and Senegal, a multinational naval training exercise dubbed "Saharan Express 2012" will be conducted between April 23-30 along the Senegalese, Cape Verde's and Mauritanian coastlines, a military source said on Friday here.

According to the public relations department of the Senegalese army, the training exercise will be an occasion to activate a maritime operations coordination center bringing together personnel from 12 countries participating in the exercise as well as France and Spain which are attending as observers.

The exercise will also have participants from Cape Verde, Gambia, Morocco, Mauritania and Sierra Leone.

In a statement, the Senegalese army indicated further that on the sidelines of this military training exercise, between April 24 and 25, a sequence of training for nurses coming from participating African countries will take place under the auspices of the Africa Partnership Station (APS).

APS is a U.S. program whose main objective is to improve security in the Gulf of Guinea.

It is officially said that the military training is meant to train professionals charged with the task of providing maritime security by fighting against common crimes such as drug trafficking, terrorism, illegal fishing and sales of counterfeit goods.