{Rabat – Morocco said on Thursday it had dismantled a “terrorist cell” of 10 people including a Frenchman suspected of having links to the Islamic State group and planning attacks in the country.}<\/p>\n
Authorities carried out the arrests in several towns including Essaouira, Meknes, Sidi Kassem and al-Jadida, an interior ministry statement said, without revealing the identity of those detained.<\/p>\n
They “might have links with jihadists fighting with Daesh”, it said, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS, and had “received instructions to attack installations and sensitive sites” in Morocco.<\/p>\n
They “planned to bring more extremist elements into their destructive plan… under the supervision of experienced Daesh group leaders, one of whom is in Turkey,” it said.<\/p>\n
Ammunition and weapons were seized during the raids, the ministry added.<\/p>\n
Morocco is on guard against deadly attacks like those claimed by ISIS in Tunisia last year that killed 59 foreign tourists.<\/p>\n
Rabat says 152 “terrorist cells” have been broken up since 2002, including 31 with ties to jihadists in Iraq and Syria since 2013.<\/p>\n
The number of foreign fighters who travelled to Iraq and Syria to fight with ISIS reached at least 27 000 in the past 18 months, a study by the US-based Soufan Group said in December.<\/p>\n
Of those, around 8 000 were from the Maghreb region, including at least 1 200 from Morocco, it said.<\/p>\n
Source:News 24:Morocco: [Frenchman among 10 arrested in ‘ISIS-linked’ cell->http:\/\/www.news24.com\/Africa\/News\/morocco-frenchman-among-10-arrested-in-isis-linked-cell-20160218]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Rabat – Morocco said on Thursday it had dismantled a “terrorist cell” of 10 people including a Frenchman suspected of having links to the Islamic State group and planning attacks in the country.} Authorities carried out the arrests in several towns including Essaouira, Meknes, Sidi Kassem and al-Jadida, an interior ministry statement said, without revealing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000072302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2462],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-news-24"],"bylines":[{"id":2462,"name":"News 24","slug":"news-24","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2462,"name":"News 24","slug":"news-24","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000072302,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23344.png","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/png","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23344.png","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23344.png","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23344.png","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23344.png","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23344.png","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000072302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23344"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23344"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}