According to the influential Al Moudhajid newspaper, official authorities recorded 90 deaths from the fires, including around 60 soldiers, and a large number of people burned and affected with symptoms of asphyxiation.

‘Algeria, united and in solidarity, was able to reveal the odious face of a conspiracy executed by a terrorist organization financed and supported by the Makhzen and the Zionist entity,’ the daily refers in a front-page op-ed entitled Checkmate.

Makhzen is an Arabic term, which literally means ‘warehouse,’ and figuratively describes an elite grouped around a monarch, used to refer to Morocco.

The daily’s reporter adds ‘the effective response of the State and the extraordinary mobilization of the citizens aborted a long-standing destabilization attempt, demonstrated by Morocco’s call to interfere and statements by its foreign minister in presence of his Israeli counterpart.’

A week earlier, while in Algeria hundreds of firefighters and volunteers were fighting forest fires, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid visited Morocco to formalize the resumption of diplomatic relations between Rabat and Tel Aviv, the journalist recalled.

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