Three Polisario Front fighters were killed on Sunday, June 7, during a military operation targeting the Moroccan defense wall. Among the victims was Lahbib Mohamed Abdelaziz, a brigade commander and son of a historical figure in the independence movement.

Three days of national mourning declared

According to a statement from the Sahrawi Press Service (SPS), Lahbib Mohamed Abdelaziz "fell on the field of honor." In response to this loss, the leadership of the movement declared three days of national mourning.

Aged 37, this senior officer was an influential member of the Polisario National Secretariat. While his death has been officially confirmed, the identities of the two other fighters killed alongside him have not been released.

A successor profile: Born in 1989 in the Tindouf refugee camps (Algeria), Lahbib Mohamed Abdelaziz was the son of Mohamed Abdelaziz, who presided over the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) from 1976 until his death in 2016. Rapid rise, Lahbib had been promoted in 2024 to head the first reserve brigade and elected to the top of the movement's political apparatus.

The hypothesis of a Moroccan drone strike

Although the Polisario Front has not provided technical details about the attack, several Spanish media outlets (including the daily newspaper El País ) report that the three men were targeted by a drone strike attributed to Moroccan forces . The incident occurred east of the "Sand Wall," a 2,700-kilometer fortification erected by Rabat in the 1980s to block incursions by pro-independence groups.

A fifty-year-old conflict reignited

Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony with abundant fishing grounds and rich phosphate deposits, remains a non-self-governing territory according to the UN. While Morocco controls most of it, the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria, has been demanding its independence for half a century.

After nearly thirty years of ceasefire, tensions reached a new level in November 2020 , when the Polisario Front officially announced the resumption of armed struggle against Morocco.