US diplomat appointed as UN envoy to WSahara: report Sep 10, 2008
A shantytown on the outskirts of Western Sahara's main city of Laayoune. A Spanish daily. (Yahoo News -- Politics)
Making a meal of human rights Dec 20, 2007
Meanwhile, the ships continue to load at the Western Sahara capital, Laayoune. The phosphate rock is transported down the world's longest conveyor belt from the inland mining town of Boucraa. (Sydney Morning Herald -- World)
Funding Shortfall for Refugees Oct 3, 2007
UNHCR has 24 staff in Laayoune in the territory and 23 in the Tindouf camps. 2007 UN News Service. (allAfrica.com)
Torture Charges Mar Western Sahara Talks Jun 24, 2007
LAAYOUNE, Western Sahara With each question she refused to answer, 14-year-old Zahra Bassiri said, Moroccan police grabbed her hair, yanked her head back and slammed her face against the wall ... A pro-independence graffiti is scrawled on a wall in a Saharawi neighborhood of Laayoune, Western Sahara, in this June 14, 2007 photograph ... "The beating started at once," she recounted in an interview arranged by Saharawi rights activists in Laayoune, Western Sahara's main city. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- World)
Moroccans cut off from YouTube May 30, 2007
The most popular, with around 2,500 views over the past month, purports to show police violently cudgeling a group of Saharawi women protesting in Laayoune, Western Sahara's main city. It was posted last December. (MSNBC -- Technology)
YouTube site 'blocked' in Morocco May 30, 2007
One such, posted in December 2006, says it shows police beating female protesters in the Western Saharan city of Laayoune. The desert territory was seized by Morocco and Mauritania in 1975 after the colonial power, Spain, pulled out. (BBC News -- Africa)
Morocco: Western Sahara Awaits End to 30 Years of Limbo May 5, 2007
Morocco administers and occupies much of the territory, including the capital city, Laayoune. Meanwhile, more than 160,000 Sahrawis are living in desert refugee camps in southern parts of the country and Algeria with few resources and a bleak future. (allAfrica.com)
WESTERN SAHARA: 'Humanitarian diplomacy' means staying out of politics Apr 27, 2007
LAAYOUNE, 26 April 2007 (IRIN) - A 30 year-old political deadlock in Western Sahara is on the Security Council's agenda this week, but for aid workers working to help civilians caught in the middle, politics is the last thing to be discussed. "This is a 100 percent pure humanitarian mission," Alessandra Morelli of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) told IRIN from her office in Laayoune, perched on the northern edge of the Sahara desert, in an interview earlier this year ... UNHCR also... (AlertNet)
Western Sahara Between Autonomy and Intifada Mar 17, 2007
The official ceremonies did not take place in Laayoune, the declared capital of Western Sahara, but in the small outpost of Tifariti near the Algerian border ... The concessions were indeed significant: Moroccans would have dominated the final status vote and POLISARIO would have had to return to Laayoune under the flag of Morocco ... Routine Moroccan quashing of a small demonstration in Laayoune provided the spark that ignited the Sahrawi intifada in May 2005. (Ocnus.net)
