On Aug. 13, an Al Qaida suicide operative tried unsuccessfully to board a tourist bus in the North African kingdom. The attacker, carrying a natural gas cylinder, was stopped by the bus driver and was seriously injured.

Officials said the attacker, a government engineer, was identified as belonging to Morocco's Salfiya Jihadiya, an Al Qaida-aligned group. None of the tourists, most of them Western, were hurt in the bombing in Meknes, Middle East Newsline reported.

Officials said the new Al Qaida Organization in the Islamic Maghreb has established and directed insurgency cells against Western and tourist targets in the kingdom.

The bomber was identified as Hisham Dokali, an engineer in the tax office of Meknes, located in central Morocco. Officials said Dokali, reported to be in critical condition at a military hospital, was believed to have consulted with others before the bombing. Dokali's wife was also said to have been detained and interrogated.

On Thursday, Morocco's media reported the arrest of four suspects in connection to the Meknes bombing. The media said the suspects were also engineers and graduates of a Casablanca university.

Al Qaida sought to conduct a series of suicide strikes in Casablanca during March and April 2007. In July, Moroccan authorities were placed on maximum alert for an impending Islamic attack on the kingdom's tourist industry.

In neighboring Algeria, a car bomb exploded on Aug. 14 in an eastern suburb of Algiers. The target of the car bombing was said to be Mustapha Kertali, a former Islamic insurgent who has become a supporter of the Algerian regime. Kertali was injured in the attack.