Morocco is poised to participate in a ground operation to restore legitimacy in Yemen and fight the Iran-backed Houti rebels.

Troops from nine Arab countries, including Morocco, are expected to take part in a ground operation of Yemen, according to news website Alyaoum24, citing Yemeni media sources.

The military campaign aims at fighting and weakening the Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the troops loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

According to the same source, troops from Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan and Kuwait will be heading to the province of Marib in the coming hours. These troops will be fighting alongside forces loyal to the government, aided by airstrikes led by Saudi Arabia.

The same source added that in addition to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Qatar also deployed troops to Yemen for the first time since the beginning of the Saudi-led military operation, codenamed Decisive Storm, in Yemen.

According to Doha-based Al-Jazeera, one-thousand group troops, supported by armored vehicles and helicopters, are headed for the province of Marib.

This comes after a missile strike killed 60 soldiers, including 45 from the UAE, 10 Saudi and five Bahraini soldiers, at a base in the province of Marib.

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Egyptian security officials say an army officer and a conscript have been killed and five soldiers injured when their armoured vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in the northern part of Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.

The officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to reporters, said the explosion took place Monday morning in the Taweel Al Amir area south of Rafah and that the injured were taken to the military hospital in Al Arish.

Egypt has been battling an insurgency in northern Sinai for years, but attacks against the army and police have increased after the July 2013 removal of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

The ISIL affiliate based in Sinai has claimed a series of large-scale assaults.

Tunisian authorities have warned of possible car bombings in the capital Tunis and banned traffic in parts of the city after receiving intelligence reports about potential attacks, the state news agency, TAP, has said.

Sunday’s report, based on an interior ministry source, said that a potential assault involving car bombs and attackers with bomb belts had meant to target strategic points in Tunis.

“Orders have been given to intensify patrols and searches by the police and the army in certain parts of the capital and the suburban neighbourhoods,” the source said.

Authorities closed off access to the main Avenue Habib Bourguiba in the centre of the city and several other main streets, the agency reported.

With the world still reeling from images of a drowned Syrian boy, European authorities say it is their top priority to fight an army of an estimated 30,000 people-smuggling suspects blamed for such tragedies.

Officials say the deadly business that may be worth billions of dollars is preying on the sheer desperation of growing numbers of people fleeing war and poverty in places like Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Somalia.

Smugglers belonging to loose networks are increasingly using social media, well-organised routes and ruthless tactics to bring waves of refugees and migrants to Europe.

But there is new urgency in the wake of cases such as the death of three-year-old Syrian Aylan Kurdi — found lifeless on a Turkish beach after the smuggling boat carrying his family to Greece sank in the Aegean Sea — and the deaths of 71 people in an airless van on an Austrian highway.

“It is the top priority for sure, not only for Europol but for all member states,” Robert Crepinko, head of the organised crime network at the European Union’s police agency Europol, told AFP.

“If you talk about the whole range of illegal migration across Europe, not only focusing on the Mediterranean, the number is 30,000 suspects.”

The EU launched a new naval mission against people smugglers in the Mediterranean in July, starting with an intelligence-gathering phase, before readying to take military action against trafficker’ boats, mainly off the Libyan coast.

The naval mission and Europol say they are cooperating through an office in Sicily to identify and dismantle networks of smugglers bringing refugees across the Mediterranean.

Crepinko added Europol will shortly open a cell in Piraeus, Greece, to tackle smuggling from Turkey.

But as only 3,000, or one-tenth, of the 30,000 suspects in Europe are specifically involved in moving people across the Mediterranean, Europol’s remit also covers other routes including the increasingly popular western Balkans into Hungary.

Migrant smuggling — combined with human trafficking for sexual and labour exploitation — now earns organised criminal gangs more than weapons and the drugs trade, according to the EU border control agency Frontex.

“It’s probably the most profitable business there is,” Frontex spokeswoman Izabella Cooper told AFP.

Smugglers are increasingly resorting to Facebook and other social media to advertise their services, negotiate prices, and arrange travel venues and times for migrants, the officials said.

Investigations are complex, with Europol’s Crepinko saying smugglers of different nationalities and religions operate in “fluid” groups who come together when there is business.

He cited the example of an alleged 16-member ring that was broken up in Greece recently with the arrests of two Romanians, two Egyptians, two Pakistanis, seven Syrians, one Indian, one Filipino and one Iraqi.

The gang allegedly smuggled mainly Syrians from Turkey to Greece via sea, air and land to Europe, providing the refugees and migrants with falsified documents, and making an estimated 7.5 million euros (about $8.4 million) during the few moths it was operating.

Separately, Turkish authorities have reportedly arrested four suspected traffickers, all Syrian nationals, over the deaths of 12 Syrian migrants including three-year-old Aylan.

The task of European authorities is further complicated by the network of routes that desperate refugees and migrants take.

Frontex has discovered a network run by Eritreans leading from Eritrea to Libya through Sudan then onto Europe, while one of many others goes through Ghana, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Once in Libya, Cooper said, there are networks that specialise in sending refugees across the Mediterranean in overcrowded fishing boats or dinghies, which Frontex suspects “might be imported from China”.

She said Frontex has heard that smugglers have put migrants on the vessels at gunpoint when the latter realise how unseaworthy they are and refuse to board.

European Union officials say they hope to reach an agreement with African leaders on tackling smuggling networks during a crucial EU-Africa summit in November in Malta.

“We need to strengthen cooperation with some key countries which are springboards for this,” an EU diplomat told AFP.

Yesterday, the Islamic State released an audio message from a group of jihadists claiming that al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s (AQIM) Al Ansar Battalion in Algeria had joined Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s cause.

AQIM, which is al Qaeda’s official branch in North Africa, has now responded by releasing a statement of its own. (The statement can be seen on the right.) AQIM’s men downplay the defection, saying only a small part of the battalion was actually wooed by the Islamic State.

A figure identified as the emir of the Al Ansar Battalion, Abu Saheeb Osama, says that he “and all mujahideen in the Al Ansar Battalion in the Central Region [of Algeria]” are “under the control of Sheikh Abu Musab Abdul Wadoud, emir of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.”

“The individuals who defected from the organization [al Qaeda or AQIM] and pledged bayat [allegiance] to the state organization…are fewer than 10,” he adds.

Abu Saheeb Osama finishes the statement with a warning to other jihadists about joining the Islamic State: “We call on all other mujahideen in the Islamic Maghreb especially, and the other areas of jihad in general, to sit on the book [referring to the Qur’an] and Sunnah [traditions of the Prophet Muhammad] to understand the Ummah’s predecessors. Renounce all that would distract and differentiate their group.”

Abu Saheeb Osama’s statement is a direct rebuttal to the Al Ansar Battalion fighters featured in the Islamic State’s message. Those fighters called on all members of al Qaeda and AQIM to put aside their doubts and join Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s organization. The jihadist known as Abu Saheeb Osama obviously doesn’t approve.

Morocco’s Islamist party dominated this North African kingdom’s urban areas in local elections, but lost out in total seats to a party created by an associate of the king, according to preliminary results announced early Saturday.

The elections were seen as an important test of the popularity of the Islamist-led government which came to power after the pro-democracy demonstrations of the 2011 Arab Spring.

The councils manage local affairs in conjunction with state-appointed officials and are being strengthened under a new government policy of regionalization.

Some 30,000 local council seats and 700 regional council seats were contested by more than 140,000 candidates from at least 30 parties. The ministry reported a turnout of 52 percent.

The Party of Authenticity and Modernity took 20 percent of the seats, some 5,064 seats, with 81 percent of the votes counted.

The party was created in 2008 by one of the king’s counselors and it dominated local elections the following year.

It fared poorly, however, in the 2011 parliamentary elections amid Arab Spring-inspired calls for reform. Those elections were dominated by the Islamist opposition party that went on to form a government.

The Islamist Party for Justice and Development took 17 percent of the seats, winning control of councils in the main cities of Casablanca, Tangiers, Rabat, Fez and Agadir.

Unlike their counterparts elsewhere around the region, Morocco’s Islamists have played down religious issues in their campaigns and preferred to focus on combatting corruption and unemployment.

The party, and its charismatic leader Abdelilah Benkirane, have preserved their popularity despite implementing austerity measures and cutting energy subsidies in order to reduce the budget deficit.

Heavy clashes broke out between Islamic State and army units loyal to the country’s official government near the eastern city of Derna on Friday, killing four soldiers, military officials said.

Three soldiers were also wounded during fighting with Islamic State fighters outside Derna, a city east of Benghazi, military officials said.

The conflict is part of chaos gripping Libya, which has fragmented into two governments and parliaments allied to former rebel groups that helped topple Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Islamic State, which has exploited a security vacuum in the oil producer, has had a base outside Derna, a traditional jihadi hotspot, since a rival group kicked it out of the coastal city in June.

The air force loyal to the internationally recognized government based in the east also attacked suspected Islamist militant targets in Benghazi, a different battle site, air force spokesman Nasser al-Hassi said.

Some 15 million Moroccans go to the polls Friday for local elections seen as a gauge of the popularity of the government of Abdelilah Benkirane a year ahead of a general election.

Around 32,000 seats on local and regional bodies are in play in a vote that will offer a snapshot of the political climate, four years after the Arab Spring swept through the north African state.

The 2011 protests led to concessions from King Mohammed VI, and a new constitution was issued, leading to a parliamentary vote in November of that year that brought Benkirane’s Islamist Justice and Development Party to power.

Benkirane remains popular in the conservative country, despite limited success in tackling corruption, and is credited with bringing down the budget deficit to less than five percent of GDP, down from seven.

But Mustapha Bakkoury, leader of the opposition Authenticity and Modernity Party, has criticised Benkirane’s rule.

“His priority over the last four years has been his own clan, rather than all the people of the country,” said Bakkoury, a close adviser to the king.

With less than half of registered voters taking part in the election of 2011, turnout at Friday’s polls is being closely watched for an indication of the state of political transition in one of the region’s more stable countries.

“In a Morocco that is learning to walk along the path of democracy, participation in elections is not a luxury; rather it is the first step along the road to building the future,” said independent daily Akhbar al-Yaoum on Thursday.