THE US is leading provocative war games exercises near occupied Western Sahara with the launch of missiles close to a base held by Polisario Front independence group.

A barrage of rockets were fired on Tuesday 30 miles from the Algerian desert town of Tindouf, which is home to around 165,000 Sahrawi refugees housed in four temporary camps as well as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic — the Western Sahara government-in-exile.

The operations, conducted jointly with Morocco, have seen their air forces taking part in training exercises and navy boats patrolling the coast of the Canary Islands.

Washington and Rabat have been joined by 7,000 military personnel from nine countries — including Britain — and Nato forces in the exercises codenamed “African Lion,” which started on June 9 and are due to finish tomorrow.

“African Lion is US Africa Command’s largest exercise,” the US Africa Command (Africom) said on its website, adding “the training is focused on enhancing readiness for US and partner nation forces.

“Exercise locations are spread mainly across Morocco, from Kenitra Air Base in the north to Tan Tan and Guerir Labouhi training complex in the south,” Africom confirmed.

Moroccan Prime Minister Saad-Eddine El Othmani said the military exercises mark “the consecration of American recognition of the Moroccan Sahara.”

Former US president Donald Trump recognised Moroccan claims on the territory in return for the normalisation of relations with Israel, a controversial move which prompted mass protests inside the country.

Earlier this year it opened a consulate in Western Sahara which it described as a “historic milestone” in its relations with Morocco.

The Polisario Front has accused world powers, including the United Nations, of colluding to allow Morocco to break a 30-year-old UN-brokered ceasefire agreement, after an incursion into the demilitarised Guerguerat region last November. 

Lawyer for the group Gilles Devers has accused Morocco of “looting of [Western Sahara’s] natural resources” through the export of agricultural goods, phosphates and fish, much of which was sold under European Union-Morocco trade deals.

Western Sahara was annexed by Morocco and Mauritania in 1975 after the defeat of Spanish colonisers. The two nations signed the Madrid Accords with Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, a week before he died.

Mauritania withdrew its forces in 1979, but Morocco refused to give up its claim on the land, insisting that Western Sahara was an integral part of the country.

But a United Nations commission of inquiry found that “the majority of the population within the Spanish Sahara was manifestly in favour of independence.”

And the International Court of Justice rejected Morocco’s claim of precolonial historical sovereignty.

In 1991 the United Nations brokered a ceasefire on the basis that Morocco would hold a referendum on independence. But Morocco reneged on the agreement, instead offering regional autonomy to Africa’s last colony.