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| Africa: North |
| Extremists enter Morocco to carry out attacks: Report |
| 2004-01-31 |
| Five suspected Muslim extremists from Lebanon and Sudan have entered Morocco on British passports with a view to carrying out terror attacks, a report in the press said yesterday. The five belong to the Usbat Al-Ansar group — Arabic for League of Partisans — which is said recently to have sworn loyalty to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, wrote the Al Ahdath Al Maghribia daily, quoting "security sources." The influential daily also reported that two foreign commando groups were planning attacks on "American and Jewish interests in Morocco and Tunisia during the Eid El Kebir holiday period," which begins on Sunday in Morocco. One of the alleged commando groups, made up of a Jordanian, a Sudanese and a Yemeni, was on its way to Morocco, while the other — comprising an Algerian, an Egyptian and a Moroccan — was heading for Tunisia, the paper wrote. Both alleged commando groups are linked to Usbat Al Ansar, wrote the paper, without specifying if the two groups were directly tied to the suspected extremists travelling on British documents. The Moroccan authorities neither confirmed nor denied the allegations made by the paper, which come amid a new wave of arrests of suspected extremists in the north African country, still traumatised by a wave of terror attacks in its economic hub, Casablanca, which killed 45 people, including 12 suicide bombers, last May. Last week, Moroccan police arrested 37 suspected extremists in a raid on villages near the town of Meknes. One policeman and one suspected Islamic radical were killed in the sweep, which also netted some 90 detonators and nearly 4 kilogrammes (9 pounds) of plastic explosives. Those raids were carried out as part of continued police investigations into the attacks in Casablanca on May 16 last year — the first terror attack in the north African kingdom, which prides itself on its moderate form of Islam and is trying to position itself as a burgeoning democracy. |
| Posted by:TS |