Morrocan blasts killed 13 bombers
Five “groups of kamikazes” – 14 attackers in all – carried out the deadly series of suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco’s commercial capital, killing 28 people, the interior minister said.
Thirteen bombers were killed. A surviving, wounded attacker was being interrogated, said the minister, Mostapha Sahel. A bomb in working order was found in a raid on the attacker’s house, the minister said.
The bombers divided into five groups and chose five “soft targets” – from a Spanish social club to an old Jewish cemetery. About 100 people were injured in the Friday night attacks, 14 of them seriously, the interior minister said.
The dead included two Spaniards, two French and one Italian, he said.
The deadliest attack ripped through the upscale Casa de Espana social club as clients were playing bingo or dining. Some 20 people were killed, among them a guard whose throat was slit, according to the club president.
The scene of horror was repeated at other sites, including a five-star hotel.
“People were severely wounded, crawling in the street, completely burned and disfigured,” said Sabah Mazouzi, a 33-year-old Moroccan teacher who was in the club but escaped unscathed. “I saw one person missing his jaw,” she said.
The interior minister said the attackers appeared to all have been Moroccans.
“We have strong suspicions that this cell had contacts with foreign groups,” the minister said, without directly implicating Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terror network.
The attacks were “the work of an international network of blind terrorism,” Hassam Aourid, a spokesman for the Moroccan king, said in a statement carried by the official MAP news agency. “Morocco is determined to crack down on it without mercy.”
Secretary of State Colin Powell said the US condemns “in the strongest possible terms the despicable terrorist bombings”.
“The United States of America will continue to stand together with Morocco against this threat to both our nations and all peace-loving people,” he said.
Three suspects, all Moroccans, were detained on Friday night, MAP reported without elaborating.
The strikes left a grisly trail of devastation, stunned this Muslim kingdom on the Atlantic coast – a staunch US ally – and left the world to grapple anew with the knowledge that terror’s reach has no bounds.
Besides the Casa de Espana, suicide bombers struck a Jewish community centre called the Israelite Community Circle, an old Jewish cemetery, a major hotel and the Belgian Consulate.
But Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said his country believed the consulate was “collateral damage,” with the real target a restaurant across the street.
The Positano restaurant is owned by a French Jew of Moroccan origin. Jean-Mark Levy said the bomb exploded in the middle of the narrow street and the consulate took most of the impact.
The attacks just after 9pm local time (10pm UK time) threw Casablanca into chaos. The city remained on edge yesterday.
“We are profoundly shocked,” said Serge Berdugo, president of the Council of the Jewish Community in Morocco. “This drama is a thunderbolt in a serene sky.”
Up to 4,000 Jews live in Morocco, and the kingdom is proud of the harmony that marks relations between its Jewish minority and Muslims.
The blasts came just four days after a series of suicide bombings in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, killed 34 people, including two Britons, at three foreigners’ housing compounds.
Morocco has been grappling with rising Islamic militancy. King Mohammed VI had expressed concern that the US-led war on Iraq could rouse the country’s Islamic fundamentalist movement.
In April, the kingdom put off municipal elections over fears that fundamentalists could gain ground. That decision came after scores of arrests among suspected Muslim militants.
Last year, Moroccan authorities cracked an al Qaida plot to attack British and US warships in the Strait of Gibraltar. Three Saudis were given 10-year prison sentences in February.
Dia’a Rashwan, an expert on radical Islamic groups at Egypt’s Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said terrorists wanted the Casablanca strikes to convey the message: “We are capable of striking anywhere, very efficiently and regardless of security measures.”
The terrorists were saying that “the war with America is going on, anywhere, and anytime”, he added.
The bombs devastated parts of buildings, including the entrance to the Hotel Safir. Body parts were strewn about at some attack sites.
At the Casa de Espana, club president Rafael Bermudez said a suicide bomber slit a guard’s throat before blowing himself up under a tent where clients were seated, including several Spaniards.
“It’s a catastrophe, a tragedy,” he told The Associated Press. “I don’t understand why terrorists chose this place.”
Spain was a close ally of the US in the war on Iraq.
“There was flesh. Flesh everywhere,” Lamia Haffi, an employee of the restaurant, told Spanish National Radio.
Cities across the globe have been bracing for the possibility of attacks.
A US counterterrorism official in Washington said al Qaida involvement was plausible, given the group’s apparent intention to strike lightly defended targets. Al Qaida maintains a presence in Morocco, the official said.
In an audiotape released in February, bin Laden himself described Morocco as one of several US allies that was “ready for liberation”.
