The inhabitants of the Souk of Tassrirt, about twenty kilometres from Tafraout, woke up yesterday to the discovery of a crime that has stirred up the merchants of this small, peaceful communal centre, which nevertheless lacks significant commercial activity.

The bandits smashed, during the night before, the doors of a small general food store. They seized the cash register which contained nearly seven hundred dirhams in coins, before making off with the store's safe. The "loot" was taken to a remote place a few dozen metres from the Souk, where the thugs, apparently well-versed in this type of crime, managed to open it by neutralising its security combination with a sledgehammer.

Fortunately, to their great disappointment, they found nothing important in it; the furniture only contained personal documents of the owner. This theft brings back to the table the problem of insecurity that reigns in the rural regions of Tafraout, where this type of offence is experiencing an increasingly worrying frequency. The lack of permanent identity control patrols makes these regions hideouts where criminals of all stripes come to lurk. They concoct and execute their plans for robbery at their ease, before fleeing, without ever being worried by the security forces. However, besides the lethargy of the latter, the other hitch, and not the least, to incriminate is the recurring insufficiency of the number of gendarmes in service at the level of the Tafraout brigade. Which number, at best, does not exceed a dozen elements. This is while this brigade is supposed to cover five rural communes in addition to the municipality of Tafraout. An aberration that shows the derision of the means put in place to meet the needs in terms of security in these vast territories.