Morocco blast kills 14

MOROCCO: A bomb attack at a crowded tourist cafe in the main square of the Moroccan city of Marrakesh killed 14 people, mostly foreigners, as world leaders denounced the "terrorist" act.

King Mohammed IV ordered an urgent probe after Thursday's attack, the deadliest in Morocco since 2003, when 45 people including suicide bombers perished in a string of coordinated bombings in Casablanca.

UN leader Ban Ki-moon condemned the "heinous" bomb attack with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling it a "cowardly" act.

A local official said the explosion at the cafe on the popular Jamaa el-Fna square, a cultural heritage site that draws a million tourists a year, may have been the work of a suicide bomber.

Interior Minister Taib Cherkaoui put the death toll at 14 - 11 foreigners and three Moroccans. Twenty-three people were wounded, he told journalists.

Medical sources said eight of the dead were French.

A Dutch man died and two others - a man and a woman - were seriously wounded in the attack, Dutch foreign ministry official Christophe Kamp told AFP. An official at the Marrakesh prefecture said the midday blast "could have been the work of a suicide bomber", adding: "We found nails in one of the bodies."

But Cherkaoui would not confirm the theory. "I cannot say it was a suicide bomber," he said.

MARRAKESH, Friday, AFP