Morocco breaks up al Qaeda recruiting gang-agency

RABAT, May 6 (Reuters) Moroccan officials dismantled a network recruiting fighters for al Qaeda's North African branch and arrested 20 people overnight in several towns across the country, state news agency MAP reported today.

The gang was involved in sending volunteers to training camps run by the Algerian-based al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), MAP said, citing police sources.

Morocco, a staunch US ally, says it has broken up more than 50 militant Islamist cells, some linked to al Qaeda, and arrested more than 3,000 people since suicide bombings in the financial capital Casablanca in 2003.

Four years of calm were broken this year when six Islamists blew themselves up in the course of a month in Casablanca, killing one other person.

Reuters SM DB2135