Police in Morocco on Monday arrested 10 women accused of belonging to an all-female Islamic State cell that was plotting attacks across the Kingdom and recruiting for the jihadist group, the interior ministry said.
The alleged cell members had links to IS jihadists in Syria and Iraq, and was recruiting and training women in several parts of the country including Tangiers - a popular tourist attraction - and towns near the capital Rabat, the ministry said.
It is the first time that Moroccan authorities have broken up a women-only terrorist cell, the ministry stated.
The suspects "tried to obtain the chemicals used to make explosive belts" and were planning to attack "vital installations", the interior ministry said.
Chemicals that could have been used to make bombs were found during police raids on the home of one of the alleged cell members, the ministry stated.
Dozens of terrorist cells with ties to jihadists in Iraq and Syria have been uncovered in the past three years in Morocco and more than 150 since 2002 according to Moroccan authorities.
A 2003 attack in Morocco's business capital Casablanca left 45 dead, while a 2011 attack at a tourist site in Marrakesh killed 17 people.
Al-Qaeda's late leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is believed to have ordered the bombing allegedly carried out by an offshoot of the Al-Qaeda-linked Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.
