Morocco-Polisario Tensions Escalate: France Urges Restraint in Western Sahara

"France is calling today for everything to be done to avoid escalation and to return as soon as possible to a political solution," the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs told AFP. "These events," it noted, "demonstrate the importance of a rapid relaunch of the political process." According to it, this process notably involves the appointment of a new personal envoy of the UN Secretary-General as soon as possible.

On Friday, Morocco deployed elements of the Royal Armed Forces (FAR) in the Guerguerat buffer zone to secure the flow of goods and people. A military intervention that follows the repeated actions of the Polisario in the region. In a statement to AFP, Mohamed Salem Ould Salek, "foreign minister of the proclaimed Republic" by the Polisario, informed that the war had begun and that Morocco had liquidated the 1991 ceasefire. Faced with the strikes of the FAR, the militiamen of the Front fled.

A few days earlier, King Mohammed VI had warned through exchanges of messages the UN, France, the United States, Mauritania, and other stakeholders in the case of this military operation.