Morocco dismantles suspected terrorist cell in Tangier

RABAT - Moroccan security services dismantled on Monday a suspected terrorist cell in the northern city of Tangier, said a statement from the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations (BCIJ).

BCIJ security forces arrested four members of the terrorist cell during raids in four sites in Tangier. They had to fire warning bullets as a precaution, allowing to avoid the terrorist danger and to arrest the main suspect along with the other three suspects.

Bladed weapons, equipment and electronic equipment were seized during the operations.

According to the initial investigation, the suspects, who failed to join the ranks of the Islamic State group in the Sahel region, decided to get involved in dangerous plans for terrorist attacks inspired by of IS's modus operandi in the Syrian-Iraqi zone.

Investigators traced a video in which the suspects had pledged allegiance to the IS, vowing to further the plans of this terrorist organisation, the statement said.

Until 2018, Morocco had been spared jihadist attacks since 2011, when a bomb attack on a cafe in Marrakesh's famed Jamaa El Fna Square killed 17 people, most of them European tourists.

Two young Scandinavian women were beheaded while on a hiking trip in Morocco's High Atlas mountains last December.

Danish student Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and her hiking companion 28-year-old Norwegian Maren Ueland, nature lovers who were training to be guides, were on a Christmas holiday hiking trip when they were killed.

Attacks in the North African country's financial capital Casablanca killed 33 people in 2003.

Those attacks - carried out by 12 suicide operatives who came from one of Casablanca's main shanty towns - greatly affected public opinion.

Morocco has since improved its security and legal framework, alongside boosting supervision of religious affairs and anti-terror cooperation with other states.