Has Morocco Carried Out Its First Drone Strike In Western Sahara?

Rabat, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 11th Apr, 2021 ) :Morocco's reported use of a drone strike to kill a senior Western Sahara independence fighter would, if confirmed, mark a turning point in the decades-long conflict, experts say.

The Polisario Front announced on Wednesday that its police chief Addah al-Bendir had been killed "on the field of honour" in a separatist-controlled part of the disputed desert territory.

A Polisario official later told AFP that Bendir had been killed by a Moroccan drone after taking part in a military operation near a sand barrier separating Moroccan and Polisario-controlled zones.

The location and circumstances of his death are murky, and the North African kingdom has not released any details. But Moroccan and Algerian press outlets have carried reports that a drone was involved.

Moroccan military expert Abdelhamid Harifi told AFP that "officially, Morocco doesn't have armed drones -- but it has a whole range of state-of-the-art unarmed drones".

The kingdom has been "a regional pioneer in using drones for intelligence and to identify targets", he added. "It's possible that the army used such a drone to pinpoint suspect movement in the buffer zone." Bendir's death comes after decades of simmering tension between Morocco and the Polisario rose sharply in November after Rabat deployed the army to reopen the kingdom's only highway into West Africa.

The Polisario, which has long demanded a referendum on an independent state, had blocked the highway arguing that it was built in violation of a 1991 truce deal.

The Polisario has since announced daily attacks against Morocco, which controls most of the former Spanish colony and has offered autonomy under its own administration, though claims are difficult to independently verify in the hard-to-access area.