IS militant linked to French plot arrested in Morocco

A suspected Islamic State group militant who delivered instructions to a cell planning to carry out an attack in France has been arrested in Morocco, authorities said on Saturday.

The suspect was allegedly linked with a French IS cell that had planned to attack Paris on Thursday but was broken up by French authorities in November, the Moroccan interior ministry confirmed.

French security services broke up the cell by arresting seven men in Strasbourg and Marseille on 19 and 20 November, according to the French interior ministry.

The public prosecutor for Paris later said the men had been in contact with a commander in Iraq or Syria.

The suspected militant had met IS operatives on the Syrian-Turkish border and received instructions to be delivered to the cell in France, it charged.

The orders came from the militant group in territory it controls in both Syria and Iraq.

A year ago, Moroccan intelligence helped put French investigators on the trail of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian of Moroccan origin who had appeared in grisly IS videos and was linked to a series of plots in Europe.

A study by the US-based Soufan Group said last December that at least 1,200 Moroccans had travelled to fight alongside IS in Iraq and Syria in the previous 18 months.

The news comes as Moroccan authorities said it arrested eight men with alleged ties to IS active in the cities of Fez and Tangiers on Friday.

A rifle, ammunition "and documents inciting towards jihad" were seized during the operation on Thursday, it said in a statement announcing the arrests.

In 2011, a cafe bombing killed 17 people, mostly foreign tourists, in the central city of Marrakesh.

It was the deadliest attack in Morocco since Casablanca blasts in 2003 that killed 45 people, including 12 suicide bombers, and were claimed by Islamic militants.