A Moroccan health official announced, Monday-Tuesday, to Agence France-Presse that an elderly French tourist, who was attacked with stones near Rabat by a man, died of her injuries while her husband, who was injured like her, was still in hospital.
Leila Darfoufi, director of the regional center Moulay Youssef in Rabat, said that the eighty-year-old tourist “died of a head trauma, while her husband is in stable condition.”
The attack, whose motives were not immediately clear, took place less than 48 hours before the expected confrontation between Morocco and France in the semi-finals of the World Cup in Qatar.
According to Dr. Darfoufi, director of Moulay Youssef Hospital, to which the two victims of the attack were transferred, the two French tourists “are husband and wife. Unfortunately, the woman born in 1940 passed away. She arrived at the hospital dead. We were very disappointed because we could not save her.”
She added that her husband is in the hospital and his condition is “stable”.
An official Moroccan source told AFP that the royal gendarmerie had arrested a person “showing signs of mental disorder” on the outskirts of Rabat, after he attacked the French tourists by throwing stones.
The source said that the gendarmerie in the town of Moulay Bousselham, north of the capital, arrested “a person showing signs of mental disorder, because he subjected two foreign tourists, of French nationality, to physical assault.”
He added that the suspect “surprised the foreign citizens, without reasonable cause, and subjected them to violence by using stones, which caused them injuries of varying severity.”
The source confirmed that the arrested person is subject to a judicial investigation “to uncover the motives for committing these criminal acts.”
The French are at the forefront of foreign tourists visiting Morocco.
And last January, a 79-year-old French tourist was killed after being attacked with a white weapon in a market near the city of Agadir (south).
The anti-terror police investigated the perpetrator, before the court decided to place him in a mental hospital, ruling out any terrorist motive behind the crime.