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Rabat – The General Directorate of National Security (DSGN) will be deploying 50,000 police officers in the days leading up to Christmas to improve Morocco’s safety preparedness, according to an anonymous security source cited by Alyoum24.
The cities of Rabat, Sale, Marrakesh and Fez will be visited by travelling police teams, who will be provided 1,200 small-sized cars and various security tools to allow for the effective arrest of criminal suspects.
Abdel-Latif Hammouchi, who heads the DGSN, said he will be recruiting new officers to be a part of canine search teams, bomb detection squads and other specialized police task forces over the next year. The groups will be deployed to border areas, major cities and other regions of interest to Morocco’s growing number of international tourists.
The kingdom’s biggest cities attract thousands of Moroccans and foreigners during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
Hammouchi added that the Mohammed V Airport in Casablanca also needed upgrades for its baggage scanners, as well as facial recognition capabilities for the facility’s security cameras.
The new emphasis on Christmas security comes as Europe carries out a manhunt for the attacker who drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin earlier this week. Twelve people died and dozens were injured in the attack, for which the so-called “Islamic State” claimed responsibility on Wednesday.
”Morocco condemns in the strongest terms the cowardly terrorist act, perpetrated last Monday against a Christmas market in downtown Berlin, causing several deaths and dozens of innocent victims,” said the Moroccan Foreign Ministry said yesterday.
