UK News
The pro-independence Polisario Front declared a three-decade-old ceasefire in disputed Western Sahara was over on Friday after Morocco launched an operation to reopen the road to neighbouring Mauritania.
Rabat said its troops would “put a stop to the blockade” of trucks travelling between Moroccan-controlled areas of the disputed territory and neighbouring Mauritania, and “restore free circulation of civilian and commercial traffic”.
The Polisario Front had warned on Monday that it would regard a three-decade-old ceasefire with Morocco as over if Rabat moved troops or civilians into the buffer zone.
“War has started, the Moroccan side has liquidated the ceasefire,” senior Polisario official Mohamed Salem Ould Salek told AFP, describing the action by Rabat as an “aggression”.
“Sahrawi troops are engaged in legitimate self-defence and are responding to the Moroccan troops,” said Ould Salek, who serves as foreign minister of the Polisario-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
Algeria, a key-backer of Polisario, and Mauritania urged restraint. “Algeria calls on both parties, the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, to show a sense of responsibility and restraint,” Algeria’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Mauritania’s foreign minister also urged “all protagonists to work towards the preservation of the ceasefire”.
Polisario secretary-general Brahim Ghali has written to UN chief Antonio Guterres calling for the Security Council “to intervene urgently to put an end to this aggression against our people and our territory”, Ould Salek said.
“This will also mean the end of the ceasefire and the beginning of a new war across the region,” the Polisario said in a statement.
But the Moroccan foreign ministry said it had been forced to act by the actions of Polisario fighters and the failure of its own appeals and those of the UN peacekeeping mission MINURSO.
