Western Sahara: three Algerians killed in bombing attributed to Morocco

Published on : 11/03/2021 – 16:02

An event that is unlikely to alleviate the already strained relations in Algeria and Morocco. Three Algerian nationals were killed on Monday 1^er November in a bombing attributed to Morocco and targeting trucks connecting Mauritania and Algeria, said the official APS agency on Wednesday (November 3rd).

The agency, citing a statement from the Algerian presidency, said that “three Algerian nationals were cowardly murdered by a barbaric bombardment of their trucks while they were making the Nouakchott-Ouargla link.”

According to her, “several factors point to the Moroccan occupation forces in Western Sahara as having committed this cowardly assassination with sophisticated weaponry”.

Some 3,500 kilometers long, the road linking Nouakchott to Ouargla, in southern Algeria, runs along Western Sahara.

“Their murder will not go unpunished”

The Algerian statement did not specify the exact location where the bombardment took place but Akram Kharief, head of the specialized site Mena Defense, told AFP that “Algerian truckers were killed at Bir Lahlou in Western Sahara” .

“Their assassination will not go unpunished,” said the Algerian presidency in its press release, paying tribute to “the three innocent victims of this act of state terrorism”.

Following initial information on this incident published Tuesday on social networks, the Mauritanian army denied in a statement that such an attack had occurred in Mauritanian territory.

The question of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony considered as a “non-autonomous territory” by the UN in the absence of a final settlement, has for decades opposed Morocco to the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria.

Tensions have increased recently, culminating in Algeria breaking off diplomatic relations with its neighbor at the end of August.

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The crisis erupted shortly after the normalization of diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel, in exchange for the United States’ recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

Rabat controls nearly 80% of this vast desert territory with its rich subsoil and bordering waters full of fish, while Algiers supports the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front.

The Polisario is calling for a self-determination referendum under the auspices of the UN, which had been planned when a ceasefire was signed in 1991.

The Sahrawi separatists broke the truce with Morocco on November 13, 2020, after the deployment of Moroccan forces in a buffer zone in Western Sahara.

The UN Security Council last week called on the “parties” to the Sahara conflict to resume negotiations “without preconditions and in good faith”, by passing a resolution extending the Minurso mission in the region for one year.

With AFP