Sahel region terror threat ?

Morocco fears Africa’s Sahel region may become a stepping stone for Al Qaeda-linked fighters sneaking into the Maghreb and Europe to carry out suicide bombings, its interior minister said.

Morocco remains on high alert after suicide attacks killed 45 people in Casablanca three years ago.

"All the participants (in the war against terrorism) in Europe and the Maghreb are aware that this is a region which merits more attention ... We must be extremely vigilant," Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa said in an interview late on Saturday.

The Sahel region, which stretches from Mauritania on Africa’s western coast through northern Mali, Niger and Chad, is now synonymous with banditry, smuggling and illegal migration.

Now the same desert routes could be used by militants to smuggle bombers and weapons into Europe and the Maghreb, Benmoussa said. Security sources say they suspect the region is also being used to house militants’ makeshift training bases.

Benmoussa said top security officials from the five Maghreb states and their European Mediterranean counterparts would meet this year to update their assessment of the security threat from the Sahel and mull ways to expand their co-operation against it.

"We are all on the same side in the war against terrorism. For Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia ... France, Italy Spain and others it is a common war against terrorist networks which feed one another," he said.

Security sources have said Moroccan police in April arrested five suspected Al Qaeda members who were part of French and Italian cells planning to carry out attacks in France and Italy.

They said one of the arrested men had travelled to Algeria to meet a contact from the Al Qaeda-linked Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) to discuss the planned attacks.

The GSPC, which is Algeria’s most radical rebel group, was behind the kidnapping of 32 European tourists in the Sahara desert in 2003 as well as an attack on a military base in Mauritania in 2005.

Turning to the domestic fight against terrorism, Benmoussa said security forces had been successful in busting more than 50 cells with more than 2,000 members since the May 16, 2003 bombings in Casablanca, mainly thanks to popular support. "The population is backing the government and the security authorities in the fight against terrorism. The population rejects terrorism and extremism and that is the government’s main asset and advantage in the war against terrorism," he said


Tags: Morocco Fes, Maghreb news