Morocco has arrested three people suspected of beating up a man presumed to be homosexual and attempting to blackmail his family with a video, police said Monday.

"A suspect was arrested for assaulting a young man, who was undressed, for his assumed homosexuality, and another two were arrested for trying to blackmail the victim's family with a video," Casablanca police said.

French President Francois Hollande arrived in Morocco Saturday on an official visit that takes place against a backdrop of controversy over torture lawsuits in Paris against the kingdom's intelligence chief.

Hollande, accompanied by five ministers and a delegation of business leaders, was met on the tarmac in Tangiers by King Mohammed VI at the start of the two-day visit.

Arms seized during a swoop on an alleged extremist cell entered the country from Algeria, a Moroccan security official charged on Monday.

"Those arrested were awaiting the arrival of a Syrian expert to train them in making explosives they planned to use against public figures and places," Abdelhak El Khayyam, head of Morocco's Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation, told AFP. 

Morocco's Islamists came first in regional elections seen as a test of their popularity after nearly four years in power, but trailed the liberal opposition in municipal polls, results showed Saturday.

Friday's double elections were viewed as a gauge of the political climate ahead of a general election next year.

Moroccans voted Friday in local polls seen as a test for the ruling Islamists, who swept to power nearly four years ago after Arab Spring protests prompted reforms by the monarchy.

About 15 million Moroccans were eligible to vote in the municipal and regional polls, considered a gauge of the popularity of Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane and his government, a year ahead of a general election.

Spain and Morocco on Tuesday arrested 14 people on suspicion of belonging to a network that recruited and sent fighters to the Islamic State group.

One suspect was detained in Spain while the other 13 were arrested in cities across Morocco, a Spanish interior ministry statement said, describing it as a "joint anti-terrorist operation".

A Moroccan court sentenced two men to four months in jail Thursday for beating up a presumed homosexual because of his appearance, a rights group said.

The verdict was delivered by a court in the central city of Fez where a crowd of angry youths assaulted a man in July, accusing him of being a homosexual.

A woman and two girls have been found dead after they went missing in a flash flood caused by torrential rain in central Morocco, authorities said Thursday.

They were found Tuesday and Wednesday several kilometers from the course of the flood in a valley known as Wadi Alfet, near Azilal.   

A 27-year-old Moroccan man suffocated to death while trying to illegally enter Spain hidden inside a suitcase in the trunk of a car, police said Monday.

The man's older brother appears to have tried to smuggle him into Spain by ferry.

Four migrants died on Sunday after trying to swim to Spain's north African enclave of Ceuta from northern Morocco, the government in Rabat said.

"The interior ministry deplores the deaths on Sunday of four illegal sub-Saharan immigrants off the town of Belyounech," said a statement carried by the official MAP news agency.