Moroccan Forces Strike Polisario Vehicles Near Security Wall, Officials Reportedly Killed

A military response in the Sahara. The elements of the Royal Armed Forces (FAR) present in the Sahara destroyed two four-wheel drive vehicles of the Polisario after the militiamen of the separatist movement tried to approach the area east of the security wall, reports Morocco World News. The vehicles caught fire, and the Polisario militiamen on board were killed, it is specified.

Last April, a drone strike by the Moroccan army had killed Addah Al-Bendir, head of the Polisario’s gendarmerie in the Rouss Irni area of Tifariti. On the unofficial Facebook page of the FAR, it was written that "several leading elements" of the Polisario, including the head of the gendarmerie, were killed after an operation by the Moroccan army. For its part, the Polisario had confirmed the information. "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 Polisario militiamen 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, on the orders of King Mohammed VI, carried out 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.