The body of a French businessman was found tied up in an apartment in the Moroccan city of Casablanca on Monday, police and a source close to the investigation said.

The 47-year-old's body was discovered naked and had been "tied up with a shirt," the police were quoted as saying by MAP news agency, which added there were no signs of a break-in.

Moroccan authorities have arrested an Algerian national thought to be a member of Jund al-Khilafa, a jihadist group responsible for the September beheading of a French tourist, authorities said Sunday.  

The operation was carried out by police near the border town of Ahfir, about 30 kilometers north of Oujda, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry, which did not give a date for the arrest. 

Moroccan security forces seized nearly 24 tonnes of hashish from a number of boats and arrested 11 people after an overnight chase off the northern coast, the MAP news agency reported Saturday.

The operation came hours after Spanish police said they had seized 11 tonnes of hashish and detained 55 people across the country as part of an operation targeting a Moroccan drug trafficking ring.

Spanish police said Friday they had seized 11 tonnes of hashish and detained 55 people across the country as part of an operation targeting a Moroccan drug trafficking ring.

Police also seized two million euros ($2.2 million) in cash as well as several weapons, including two assault rifles, as part of the operation which follows a two-year investigation. 

A Moroccan man was stabbed to death in his own home in southern France in what a Muslim group called a "horrible Islamophobic" attack the week after France was rocked by the Charlie Hebdo killings.

The 28-year-old attacker forced the front door of his neighbors' house in the picturesque village of Beaucet near Avignon just after midnight on Wednesday shouting "I am your god, I am your Islam" before repeatedly stabbing Mohamed El Makouli,  he National Observatory Against Islamophobia said Friday.

A top European rights official warned Spain Friday it risked destroying its asylum system if it passed a law authorizing police to immediately deport migrants from its north African territories.

Spain says the measure is needed to help its border guards secure the border of Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish cities fenced off from Morocco.

Morocco on Thursday condemned the publication of new cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and said it will ban foreign newspapers that carry them.

"We condemn terrorist attacks but also any offense against the Muslim religion, its symbols and its prophet," Communication Minister Mustapha Khalil told reporters.

Moroccan police have detained three suspected supporters of the Islamic State jihadist group near the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, the interior ministry said on Tuesday.

The arrests were made in the border town of Fnideq where two men were held last month on suspicion of running a cell recruiting young women via the Internet to join IS, the ministry said.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb warned France on Monday to expect new attacks over its hostility to Islam, and praised jihadists behind last week's Paris killings.

"France is paying today the price of its aggression against Muslims and its hostile policy towards Islam," AQIM said in a statement posted on jihadist websites.

Morocco's Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar snubbed the mammoth march against extremism through Paris on Sunday due to the presence of "blasphemous cartoons depicting the Prophet," the ministry said.

He nevertheless went to the Elysee Palace to present the country's "sincere condolences to the French president and to the French government following the despicable attacks in France this week."