Moroccan Forces Reportedly Kill 3 Polisario Militants Near Defense Wall

Three Polisario militiamen were killed on Monday last week after attempting to carry out an "operation against a Moroccan army garrison" in the Tifariti sector, in the area east of the defense wall, report Mauritanian and separatist media. If this information were confirmed by an official source, the independence movement would thus lose four of its soldiers, including a senior official.

On April 7, a strike launched by a Moroccan drone had killed Addah Al-Bendir, head of the Polisario gendarmerie in the Rouss Irni area, in Tifariti. Morocco remained silent on this operation. For its part, the independence movement confirmed it. "One of our military leaders died on the battlefield in the liberated areas of the Sahara, during an attack carried out by a Moroccan army drone," Oubi Buchraya Bachir, its representative, had declared to RFI.

Since November 2020, hostilities between Morocco and the Polisario have resumed with a vengeance. The militiamen of the independence movement had blocked the El Guerguerat buffer zone for weeks, thus hindering the fluidity of traffic between the kingdom and Mauritania. Faced with these actions, the Royal Armed Forces (FAR) had carried out, on the orders of King Mohammed VI, a military operation to liberate the passage. Subsequently, they had erected a defense wall, to secure the Guerguerat border crossing, which has been extended by 50 kilometers to Touizgui.