Morocco on terror alert

2006-05-09 16:12

Rabat - European intelligence services have warned Morocco that terrorists are planning attacks on political, business and tourist targets in the North African country, the country's Al Ahdath Al Maghribia newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper report read: "Moroccan security authorities received a message from their European counterparts warning of (potential) attacks targeting administrative, financial and tourist spots, as well as certain embassies and foreign interests in Morocco."

It said the groups, which were unnamed in the report, were plotting bomb attacks and assassinations.

A series of simultaneous bomb attacks in Morocco's commercial capital, Casablanca, in May 2003 left 45 people dead.

Since then, more than 3 000 suspected extremists have been arrested in the country in a campaign against Islamic militants.

Tip-off from German investigators

Moroccan authorities suspect members of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM) of being behind the Casablanca attacks and the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Spain, in which 191 people died.

Al Ahdath Al Maghribia said the tip-off from European investigators was based, in part, on information culled from the interrogation of north African detainees held by German authorities in Frankfurt.

A second Moroccan newspaper, Assahra Al Maghribia, said nine suspected terrorists had been arrested in Meknes, 120km east of Rabat, last week.

It said another suspect "from a country in the Gulf" had been detained in Casablanca on Saturday, and that investigators were trying to determine the extent of his ties to extremist groups operating in Morocco.

- AFP