Egypt’s Foreign Ministry has called on the warring sides in the Guerguerat village in the Western Sahara to exercise restraint and stop the violence, according to a Sunday statement.
The ministry added that Egypt closely monitors the situation and makes necessary contacts with all related sides to preserve stability in the region.
On Saturday, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry phoned his Algerian and Moroccan counterparts to follow the developments of the crisis.
The pro-independence Polisario Front on Friday said a 30-year-old ceasefire in disputed Western Sahara ended after Morocco launched an operation in a border area.
“War has started, the Moroccan side has liquidated the ceasefire,” senior Polisario official Mohamed Salem Ould Salek told the AFP news agency.
The Moroccan military early on Friday started an operation to clear the road in the Guerguerat area, linking to neighbouring Mauritania, which it said had been blockaded for weeks by supporters of the Polisario Front.
The road, located in an UN-monitored buffer zone in the far south of Western Sahara, links the Morocco-controlled territory to neighbouring Mauritania.
The Polisario Front said the 1991 ceasefire, which it warned this week was hanging by a thread, came to an end with the Moroccan military action.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was committed to doing the utmost to avoid the collapse of the ceasefire, his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.
Guterres and other UN officials have been making phone calls and been involved in “multiple initiatives to avoid an escalation,” Dujarric said.
“The Secretary-General regrets that these efforts have proved unsuccessful and expresses grave concern regarding the possible consequences of the latest developments,” Dujarric added.
