THREE bombing suspects have blown themselves up after a police raid on a house in a Casablanca slum in which a fourth man was shot dead. The carnage began when police launched a dawn operation in the el Fida district of the Moroccan city looking for suspects involved in a bomb attack last month on an internet cafe. | They raided a house and confronted two of the four men. One was shot dead by the police and the other blew himself up after he was trapped on a roof terrace. |
Hours later, a police inspector died when a third man blew himself up in the same district. Two other police officers and a child were also hurt, according to media on the scene. Then the fourth suspect blew himself up in a crowd, a police source said. The men had apparently started wearing the belts all the time to stop security forces taking them alive.
| A police inspector died when a third man blew himself up in the same district. Then the fourth suspect blew himself up in a crowd. |
The next blast came just 150m from the spot of the first explosion, as police were continuing their door-to-door inquiries. "He jumped down from a balcony, detonating his charge,'' said a police source.
In the final attack, five people were wounded including two police officers as a man blew himself up in the main thoroughfare of the Hay al Farah district. The bomber headed towards a group of police officers before detonating his charge, said a police source.
A police statement identified the man shot dead in the morning as Mohamed Mentala, alias Warda. "The suicide bomber who killed himself in the morning is called Mohamed Rachidi,'' it said. Mentala was wanted in connection with the May 2003 bombings in Casablanca, the worst in Morocco's history, which killed 45 people including 12 suicide bombers, and leaving dozens injured.
Mohamed Tozi, a professor of political science and sociology at Casablanca's Hassan II University, said although Islamic extremists were ready for suicide attacks in the country there was a "great weakness in organisation and logistics''.
"This is worrying and reassuring at the same time,'' he said after the bombers' deaths. "Worrying because they can improve upon their structures and become very dangerous and reassuring because they are finding it difficult to merge into society and hide themselves.''