The forces of the independence movement and the Moroccan army reportedly continued to clash on Saturday near the border with Mauritania, the day after a military operation initiated by Rabat.
Fighting is continuing in Western Sahara, the Polisario Front, a Saharawi independence movement, said on Saturday, the day after the operation launched by the Moroccan army in a buffer zone of this disputed territory, near the border with Mauritania.
“Human and material damage”
“The fighting continues after the package carried out by Moroccan troops in Guerguerat,” Mohamed Salem Ould Salek, head of diplomacy of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), told AFP without further details. The SADR was proclaimed in 1976 by the separatists of the Polisario.
The cease-fire, signed between belligerent Moroccan and Sahrawis under the aegis of the UN in 1991, “belongs to the past”, reaffirmed Mr. Ould Salek.
In a statement released on Saturday, the SADR Defense Ministry said “the areas of Mahbรจs and Guerguerat were targeted by bus and machine gun fire.”
On Friday, the same ministry had reported “massive attacks” along the Moroccan defense wall in the areas of Mahbรจs, Haouza, Aousserd and Farsia, which caused “human and material damage to the enemy”, without further detail.
It has not been possible to independently verify the veracity of these claims.
The President of the SADR and Secretary General of the Polisario, Ibrahim Ghali, said on Saturday that he had issued a decree the day before announcing the end of obligations vis-ร -vis the ceasefire agreement and “the resumption of armed actions in order to protect the inalienable rights of our people โ.
Military operation
On Friday, Morocco announced that it had launched a military operation in the buffer zone of Guerguerat, in the extreme south of this undefined territory, in order to reopen the road leading to neighboring Mauritania after three weeks of road blockage.
“The UN and the African Union must impose on Morocco scrupulous respect for its own borders and those of its neighbors,” Ould Salek added.
One of the members of the Polisario Front leadership, Khatri Adouh, said he received a phone call from the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres on Friday, during which the Saharawi official reiterated Mr. Ghali’s call to condemn ” Moroccan aggression, said the Saharawi agency SPS on Saturday.
For its part, the Moroccan General Staff indicated Friday evening that “the passage of Guerguerat between Morocco and Mauritania is now completely secure via the establishment of a security cordon by the Royal Armed Forces”, without any mention of the situation at other points of the sand wall erected over 2,700 km to separate the two camps.