A street vendor, who attempted to set himself on fire to protest against the confiscation of his goods, died in hospital on the night of Monday to Tuesday in Marrakech, according to several sources.

Mbarek Elkarrassi, 32, had been transported to the Marrakech hospital on Saturday morning.

“The local authorities confiscated his cart loaded with old furniture that he was selling to earn a living. It was the feeling of injustice that drove him to attempt to set himself on fire,” declared Mohammed Ghelloussi, representative of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) in Marrakech.

“The burns reached his face, his stomach and his hands. He was transported to the hospital on Saturday morning but he died during the night,” continues Mr Ghelloussi.

Mbarek Elkarrassi “bought old furniture and resold it using his cart” in the working-class neighbourhoods of Marrakech, explains his brother-in-law Abdelali Idrissi.

“It was the Caid of the Essâada district who confiscated his goods and his cart,” adds Mr Idrissi, reached by telephone by the AFP.

About a dozen people have succumbed to their injuries in North Africa after attempting to set themselves on fire against a backdrop of protests launched in February 2011 in the wake of the Arab Spring.

This type of action has spread since the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian protester in December 2010, who triggered the Arab Spring in Tunisia, then in Egypt and Libya.