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The pro-independence rebels fighting against Morocco in the disputed territory of Western Sahara promised a military escalation on Sunday, hours after launching a night attack.
The Polisario Front said it bombed the Morocco-controlled area of Guerguerat, a crossing point between Western Sahara and Mauritania in a buffer zone patrolled by the UN.
AFP was unable to obtain independent confirmation of reported rocket fire, or possible casualties, in this remote desert region which is largely off-limits to journalists.
“The war will continue and intensify,” Sidi Ould Loukal, a senior Polisario security official, told AFP. “All the positions of the Moroccan army are the targets of this war.”
A Moroccan official, however, told AFP that there had only been “harassment shootings”, called the attack a “propaganda war” and insisted that “the situation is normal”.
Moroccan TV station 2M broadcast footage of trucks in the Guerguerat area and reported that the situation was “normal” early on Sunday.
Western Sahara is a former Spanish colony disputed since the 1970s between Morocco, which controls three quarters of it, and the Polisario Front supported by Algeria, which claims the independence of what it calls the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. .
The Polisario Front said it was always ready to join UN negotiations on the future of the territory – but that it would not lay down its arms. By Fadel SENNA (AFP / File) A UN-backed political process has been suspended since March 2019 and the two sides remain separated by a 2,700-kilometer (1,700-mile) sand barrier.
Tensions rose sharply when Morocco sent troops to the buffer zone on November 13 to reopen the only road leading from Morocco to Mauritania and the rest of West Africa after separatists blocked it the preceding month.
The Polisario responded by declaring the 1991 ceasefire null and void, arguing that the road did not exist when the truce was signed and was therefore illegal.
The two sides have since reportedly exchanged regular fire along the demarcation line.
‘War zone’
Map of Western Sahara. By (AFP) The pro-independence rebels launched four rockets overnight at Guerguerat, the Sahrawi news agency SPS said, also reporting attacks along the security fence.
The Guerguerat level crossing had been “closed” and the situation there was “chaotic”, declared Ould Oukal, secretary general of the Saharawi ministry of security.
“This is just the start,” he said. “It is a warning to users of this road and this land. The entire territory of Western Sahara is a war zone and is not safe.”
The senior Moroccan official contacted by AFP in Rabat, however, said: “There was harassment fire near the area of Guerguerat, but it did not affect the national road, traffic was not disrupted. .
“It has been part of a cycle of harassment for over three months,” he said.
“There is a will to create a propaganda war, a media war, on the existence of a war in the Sahara” but “the situation is normal”, he said.
The UN-backed ceasefire agreement was supposed to lead to a self-determination referendum for Britain-sized territory, home to around one million people.
Morocco has offered autonomy but maintains that the territory is a sovereign part of the kingdom.
Rabat has obtained recognition of its claim of sovereignty over the entire disputed territory of many countries which have opened consulates in Western Sahara.
Former US President Donald Trump late last year also backed Morocco, breaking decades of precedent, in return for Rabat to normalize relations with Israel.
Morocco launched a military operation on November 13 in the buffer zone of Guerguerat, in the far south of Western Sahara, to drive out a group of Sahrawi militants who were blocking a transit route to neighboring Mauritania. By Fadel SENNA (AFP / File) The Polisario Front, which waged a war for Moroccan independence from 1975 to 1991, said it was always ready to join UN negotiations over the future of the territory – but would not table not the weapons.
“In the past, we put all our confidence in the international community and definitively put an end to our armed struggle,” Ould Loukal said on Tuesday.
“We have waited 30 years – 30 years of broken promises, prevarication and untenable waiting.”
Ould Loukal insisted that the group was “open to any mediation. But at the same time, we will continue the armed struggle, on the basis of past experiences.”
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