Polisario says it killed 3 Moroccan soldiers in the south on Monday

The Polisario Front announced , on Tuesday, that it had killed three Moroccan soldiers in attacks carried out by its fighters Monday in the Orukziz Mountains in the south of the kingdom near the disputed Western Sahara between Rabat and the separatist movement.

This is the first time that the separatist movement announced that it had inflicted human losses on the Moroccan army inside the kingdom's territory since the ceasefire was violated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia al-Hamra and the Valley of Gold (Polisario) in mid-November.

Polisario declared the "Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic" in 1976 and is fighting for the independence of the former Spanish colony.

And it was not possible to obtain an official response from Rabat after the “Sahrawi Ministry of Defense” published a statement reported by the Sahara News Agency about “a direct attack targeting a guard headquarters (...) of the Moroccan army (...) in the Orukziz Mountains (...) in the depths of Moroccan soil” at dawn on Monday.

"Our fighters were able to fully control the target point and completely destroy it," the statement added, without indicating that the front suffered any losses.

According to the source, the operation resulted in the killing of three Moroccan soldiers, including a non-commissioned officer, the "guard commander", and the seizure of "their weapons and documents."

The statement also spoke about a "similar operation" without details in the Twizky region, east of the Kingdom of Morocco, near the Algerian border.

This information was not independently confirmed.

The Polisario Front affirms that it has been in a state of "legitimate self-defense" since Morocco sent its forces on November 13 to the southernmost region of Guerguerat on the border with Mauritania to expel a group of Sahrawi activists who had blocked the road to Mauritania.

And the Sahrawi forces confirmed last month that they had bombed Guerguerat and vowed to "escalate", while Rabat referred to "provocative shots."

The Moroccan site, "Oh my country," published, on Tuesday, the statement of the "Sahrawi Defense Ministry" and the news of the killing of three soldiers, commenting, "The Polisario Front continues to publish its allegations regarding its military operations against the Moroccan armed forces."

The conflict between Morocco and the Polisario continues for decades over Western Sahara, which the United Nations classifies as "Non-Self-Governing Territories."

Morocco, which controls eighty percent of Western Sahara, proposes granting this region autonomy under its sovereignty, while the Polisario demands the organization of a referendum for self-determination under the auspices of the United Nations as stated in the 1991 agreement.

The negotiations on Western Sahara, sponsored by the United Nations, and in which Algeria and Mauritania also participate, have stalled since the spring of 2019.

Source: AFP