RABAT: Young protesters have clashed with Moroccan security forces in Laayoune, the main city of Western Sahara, torching a police vehicle, a rights activist in the disputed territory said yesterday.
The protesters hurled petrol bombs at the security forces who threw rocks in response and chased them, said Hamoud Iguilid from the Moroccan Association of Human Rights. Morocco annexed the former Spanish colony in 1975 in a move never recognised by the international community, while neighbouring Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front and hosts Sahrawi refugee camps.
Rabat has vowed to invest heavily in Western Sahara in order to boost development and create jobs. But the government has increasingly come in for criticism over human rights violations in the disputed territory, which it considers an integral part of its territory, and where separatist protests are not tolerated.
Iguilid said the demonstration took place on Monday evening in the Porco district of the city, with the youths shouting pro-independence slogans when the security forces arrived.
The Moroccan prefecture in Laayoune said the police vehicle, which was on a routine patrol, was completely destroyed when a petrol bomb landed inside it, and a policeman was hospitalised.
But Iguilid denied that anyone was injured, saying the protesters hit the armoured car with a petrol bomb, “which caused a bit of fire.”
Saudi beheads
two Pakistanis
RIYADH: Saudi authorities beheaded yesterday two Pakistanis for drug smuggling in the kingdom’s first executions of the year, the interior ministry said. Abrar Hussein Nizar Hussein was executed in Jeddah after being convicted of trying to smuggle in heroin hidden in his stomach, SPA news agency said.
Zahid Khan Barakat was beheaded in Qatif, in Eastern Province, over a similar charge, a separate statement said. Last year, Saudi Arabia executed 78 people. In 2012, the kingdom carried out 76 executions.AFP
