RABAT: Morocco on Wednesday raised the toll of violent clashes during a raid on a Western Sahara squatter camp to 13 dead, including 11 members of the security forces.
"Another member of the security forces, Ali Zaari, died Wednesday from his wounds after he was savagely attacked by ‘armed militias’ during the Laayoune incidents," Morocco’s MAP news agency said, quoting a hospital official.
MAP gave the names of police casualties.
The pro-independence Polisario Front has said dozens of people died in the clashes near Western Sahara’s main town but did not give their identity.
Moroccan Interior Minister Taieb Cherkaoui said Monday the raid had been "peaceful" but accused Sahrawi protesters of reacting savagely in Western Sahara, which Morocco seized after Spain withdrew in 1975.
Cherkaoui said some Sahrawi protesters, who he described as criminal gangs, "deliberately killed members of the security forces, used knives, Molotov cocktails and gas canisters" to start fires.
The UN Security Council has deplored the raid, calling on the Polisario and Morocco "to demonstrate further political will towards a solution."
Amid complaints about Morocco delaying access to the camp, Ruhukana Rugunda, Uganda’s ambassador to the United Nations, decried what he called "a grave situation."
Rugunda, whose country is among three African nations on the Security Council, backed Polisario calls for a UN or independent fact-finding mission into the raid.
But MINURSO, the UN mission in Western Sahara, does not have a brief to investigate human rights abuses.
