Hundreds of Moroccans protest for 9th night, demand PM resignation

Young Moroccans took to the streets on Sunday in cities across the north African kingdom for the ninth straight night of protests calling for an end to corruption and a change of government.

Organised online by the Gen Z 212 collective, whose founders have remained anonymous, the rallies have swept the usually stable north African country since September 27.

The protesters have demanded reforms to social services, especially health and education, and voiced anger over social inequality.

In Casablanca, the crowd massed in the working-class El Fida district, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch, live broadcasts from Moroccan media showed.

Similar slogans were chanted in the northern city of Tetouan, where hundreds of protesters gathered, the broadcasts showed.

The capital Rabat saw only around a hundred demonstrators, who rallied in front of the country's parliament shouting "the government is corrupt".

"Reforms to the health and education sectors are primordial. We're aware that will take time but we have to start somewhere," Imran, 20, told AFP on the fringes of the protest.

GenZ 212, which has more than 180,000 members on Discord, insists on the nonviolent nature of its protests, and the gatherings since then have been largely peaceful.

There were however reports of violence in several smaller towns following the protests on Wednesday.

Three people were killed by gendarmes that night in what authorities said was "legitimate defence" after they allegedly tried to storm a station in the village of Lqliaa, near Agadir.

The rallies follow on from isolated protests that broke out in mid-September in several cities after reports of the deaths of eight pregnant women at the public hospital in Agadir who had been admitted for cesarean sections.

Demonstrators have seized on the deaths as evidence of the public health sector's shortcomings, feeding wider discontent over social inequalities.