Masked students with sticks and knives went on the rampage in a Moroccan university campus on Friday after a student from the disputed Western Sahara territory was stabbed to death, official media reported.
The MAP news agency said the head of security from the City of Knowledge in the capital Rabat had been taken hostage during the riot, but that the trouble had been brought under control. It did not say whether anyone was hurt.
It said some of the students who committed "vandalism and violent acts" originated from the Western Sahara territory, referred to by Morocco as the Southern Region. It said they set up barricades with gas canisters, beams and paving blocks.
"The situation has quickly been brought under control and fires have been contained," MAP said.
The clashes followed the deadly stabbing of 25-year old student Abbad Hammad, from the Western Sahara, in a brawl on Thursday near the campus. MAP said the brawl started when Hammad got drunk and harassed a woman on the campus.
Police were hunting for the person who stabbed Hammad, the agency said.
Morocco annexed the Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, in 1975. That sparked a war with the Polisario Front until a U.N.-brokered ceasefire in 1991. The deal provided for a referendum on the fate of the territory, but it has not been held.
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