“The silence of the Polisario separatists regarding the explosions in Es-Smara city indicates their involvement,” said Permanent Representative of Morocco to the United Nations Ambassador Omar Hilale, and Morocco has “the international right to respond to any terrorist attack.”
Explosions in the southern city of Es-Smara targeted civilians and industrial areas, with no military presence known, and resulted in the death of a young Moroccan who came from France, Hilale asserted, “and we consider him a martyr.”
Speaking on Monday at a press conference following the Security Council vote extending the mandate of the MINURSO, the UN peacekeeping mission in the Moroccan Sahara, the Moroccan official said that the Kingdom is not accusing anyone of terrorist acts in the southern city, pending the outcome of investigations by local authorities. However, he said that all present indications point directly to one party, the Polisario.
Noting that such action does not come without consequences and accountability, Hilale promised that the alleged crimes “will not go unpunished.”
“Those responsible will have to assume their legal, as well as political, responsibility,” he said, including “those who are behind them, those who shelter them, and those who provide them with missiles or Katyushas or mortars.”
He added that MINURSO forces quickly arrived at the scene of the incident, inspected the explosions in civilian areas, and subsequently submitted a report to the UN.
Four explosions in Es-Semara late Saturday killed one person and injured three others, two seriously. The public prosecutor at the Laayoune Court of Appeals announced that a police probe had been launched into what is believed to be a projectile that fell on a residential area.
The Sahara Press Service (SPS) had asserted that the Polisario militias were behind the explosions in Es-Smara.