Pope Francis will hold mass Sunday for nearly 10,000 members of Morocco's Catholic minority, on the second day of a visit during which he has already met migrants and trainee imams.

Moroccan authorities on Tuesday arrested a suspect following the murder of two Scandinavian tourists in the High Atlas mountains, the interior ministry said.

The UN envoy for Western Sahara is planning to convene talks before the end of the year between Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front on ending their decades-old conflict, the Security Council president said Wednesday.

Horst Koehler, a former German president and ex-director of the International Monetary Fund, briefed the council behind closed doors on his efforts to restart talks after a 10-year break. 

Morocco's King Mohammed VI Sunday urged the government to take "urgent action" to address social issues, in particular health and education in the north African country which has been hit by protests over employment and corruption.

In Morocco's neglected Rif region, where outrage erupted last year over the gruesome death of a fishmonger, calls for justice have evolved into a grassroots movement demanding jobs and hospitals.

Morocco's Prime Minister Saadeddine El Othmani succeeded in building a governing coalition Saturday, ending a damaging five-month political deadlock just eight days after taking office.

El Othmani, 61, of the Islamist Party for Justice and Development, or PJD, announced in a press conference in Rabat that an agreement had been reached with six political parties to form a coalition government.

Moroccans welcomed their country's "victorious return" to the African Union as their king on Tuesday took a seat at the bloc's Ethiopian headquarters for the first time in decades.

Moroccan authorities were promising Monday to investigate the death of a fish seller whose crushing in a rubbish truck sparked widespread demonstrations.

Rich countries, which have pledged $100 billion (91 billion euros) every year from 2020 for poor countries to deal with climate change, said Monday they were "confident" of meeting the target.

A Moroccan court has sentenced the younger brother of suspected Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud to two years in prison on charges including justifying terrorism, state media reported.

According to his lawyer, Yassine Abaaoud was unaware of the activities of his brother, who was killed in a French police raid just days after the November 13 attacks that killed 130 people in Paris.