A Moroccan court sentenced a former Spanish soldier to eight years in jail Friday for heading a cell that planned to carry out "terrorist acts" in the kingdom, the MAP news agency reported.

Another 17 members of the group, broken up in January 2014, were jailed for between three and 10 years in connection with their activities, mostly in the north of the country.

Polisario Front leader Mohamed Abdelaziz on Monday urged the U.N. to press Morocco to accept holding a referendum on the status of Western Sahara, following talks with envoy Christopher Ross.

"We call on the United Nations to put pressure on Morocco to make arrangements to organize a referendum on self-determination" for the disputed territory, he told Algerian public television.

Video footage of a Moroccan boy begging for mercy as a security guard bangs his head against a brick floor has shocked Sweden as the country grapples with a record influx of child refugees.

Several witnesses last week uploaded video clips to YouTube showing a security guard straddling the nine-year-old boy inside the Malmoe central station.

Morocco prosecuted twice as many suspected jihadists in 2014 than in the previous year, the state prosecutor said Thursday, linking the rise to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

"The number of terrorism-related cases last year stood at 147, compared to 64 in 2013," El Hassan Eddaki was quoted as saying by the MAP news agency.

Morocco on Wednesday vowed further crackdowns on illegal migrants after rounding up hundreds of foreigners close to the Spanish enclave of Melilla, in a move criticized by local rights groups.

The interior ministry said the operation Tuesday evacuated a forest "where migrants live in very precarious conditions."

Over 600 African migrants charged the border fence separating the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco on Tuesday, with at least 35 managing to climb the dangerously high barrier, including five who were injured, Spain's government said.

They were the latest in a flow of thousands of migrants trying to reach Melilla and the other Spanish north African territory of Ceuta, which together make up Europe's only borders with Africa.

One person was killed and two were injured in Casablanca on Monday when part of the city's historic but derelict Hotel Lincoln collapsed, local officials and Moroccan media said.

A 34-year-old man died in the dawn incident at the hotel, which is technically a listed building despite been derelict for two decades.

Spanish police said Tuesday they have arrested ten suspected members of a ring that smuggled Algerian migrants by boat into Spain, charging around 600 euros ($680) per person to make the dangerous crossings in which two people died.

Officers detained the ten Algerians, who are thought to have smuggled "dozens" of migrants into Spain, in Almeria and Murcia in southeastern Spain, including the suspected leader of the gang, police said in a statement.

A Moroccan court jailed seven people on Monday over their role in the deaths of 23 residents killed last year when three apartment blocks collapsed in Casablanca. 

They were sentenced to between two and five years in prison and fined for "involuntary homicide" and "breaching urban planning codes."

At least six would-be migrants drowned when their boat capsized near Melilla, the Spanish enclave in Morocco, authorities said Friday.

Another 10 people were rescued from the water after the boat overturned off the Moroccan town of Nador, five kilometers (three miles) from Melilla.