Morocco dismantles Syria jihadists cell

Morocco said Saturday it dismantled a “terrorist cell” recruiting jihadists to Syria to support rebels on ground, who are battling President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Authorities described the cell as “coordinating with other al-Qaeda affiliated organizations.”

While the statement did not disclose the number of people in the cell, the group allegedly trained fighters in Morocco before sending them to Syria.

The fighters were volunteers backed by money collected through fundraising.

Egypt

In another episode of Syrian conflict-spillover, Egypt has arrested a veteran of the Syrian civil war on suspicion of planning terrorist acts on Egyptian soil, Reuters reported the state news agency as saying on Sunday.

The Egyptian prosecutor’s office in Suez City ordered the arrest of Wael Ahmed Abdel Fattah for 15 days, MENA reported, adding that he was suspected of working with Islamist militant groups.

MENA said Abdel Fattah, a former oil company employee, battled in Syria alongside the al-Nusra Front, seen as the most effective rebel group fighting Assad’s regime.

Since the army toppled President Mohammad Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood last July, Islamist militants based in the Sinai Peninsula have stepped up attacks on police and soldiers, killing hundreds.

The insurgency has spread to Cairo and other cities, where senior security officials have been targeted.

The rivalry between Islamists and state security forces is not a new phenomenon.

Islamist-leaning soldiers assassinated President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981, mainly because he signed a peace treaty with Israel.

It took former President Hosni Mubarak years to put down an Islamist insurgency in the 1990s.

(With Reuters)