Elderly French Couple Attacked in Moroccan Resort Town; Wife Killed

The two French tourists are from Montbazin, a commune of 3,000 inhabitants in the Hérault. Accustomed to travel, especially in Africa, they were on a stopover in Morocco when they were attacked by a man. "There, they were leaving for Mauritania, Morocco was a stopover. We have a hard time realizing what happened. It’s really terrible..." says a friend of the victims, also a resident of Montbazin, to Midi Libre.

The attack on the two tourists took place on Monday in Moulay Bousselham, a seaside resort located in the province of Kénitra, near Rabat. "We had seen this horrible attack in Morocco pass, but without suspecting for a single moment that it was them," she confides. The 82-year-old woman succumbed to a head injury at the Moulay Youssef hospital in Rabat. Her husband is still hospitalized. "They were very well known in the village, they came to the café every morning. I nicknamed them ’the lovers’, she remembers. They were completely fused, I don’t know how he’s going to live without her..."

On Thursday, the Moroccan public prosecutor’s office opened a judicial investigation against a man arrested and suspected of having murdered this 82-year-old woman from Hérault. This individual showed "signs of mental imbalance," the royal gendarmerie said. On the orders of the Moroccan justice system, the alleged aggressor is hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital.