Morocco, the last country to maintain regular scheduled flights to Ebola-hit nations after Air France halted departures, is carrying on through "solidarity", an airline official has said.

In a bid to stop the spread of the virus that has killed more than 1,500 people across West Africa, many African governments have sought to ring-fence Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

Police found two Moroccan children aged eight and nine clinging to the undercarriage of a camper van as they tried to stowaway to Spain, authorities said on Thursday.

Border officers found the two after the van disembarked from a ship at the southern Spanish port of Tarifa, which faces the coast of Morocco, police said in a statement.

Morocco said on Friday it had arrested two Islamic State jihadists who had been planning to leave for IS training camps in Syria and Iraq to prepare attacks at home.

The two, whose identities were not disclosed, "planned to receive military training" before taking action in Morocco, "under the Islamic State's plans to expand its field of operations," an interior ministry statement said.

A leftwing student in jail in Fes in central Morocco has died after more than two months on hunger strike, a local NGO said on Thursday.

Mustapha Meziani, 31, died on Wednesday night in a Fes hospital after refusing food for 72 days, Youssef Raissouni, a leader of the independent Moroccan Association of Human Rights, told Agence France Presse.

Hundreds of African migrants tried Thursday to leap a triple-layer border fence around Spain's north African territory of Melilla but only one person made it through, the Spanish government said.

About 250 people attempted to cross the six-meter (20-foot) high fence between Morocco and the Spanish city of Melilla in the early morning, the Spanish government representative in Melilla said in a statement.

The Moroccan interior ministry said on Thursday it has dismantled a network responsible for recruiting jihadists and sending them to fight in Syria and Iraq for the Islamic State group.

"The operation, based on detailed investigations carried out in close collaboration with Spain, stems from a proactive security approach aimed at battling terrorist threats," a ministry statement said.

An activist from Morocco's February 20 movement has been sentenced by a Tangiers court to a year in jail for a "false torture allegation", her lawyer told Agence France Presse.

Wafaa Charaf must also pay a fine of 50,000 Moroccan dirhams (about $6,000, 4,500 euros) in damages and interest and a fine of 1,000 dirhams ($120, 90 euros).

Spain rescued Tuesday nearly 500 African migrants trying to enter the country by boat while hundreds more tried to scramble over a border fence into the Spanish territory of Melilla.

Spain's coastguard said it picked up 470 sub-Saharan Africans who were crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in 49 small boats, part of a surge of migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe's southern shores.

Morocco's King Mohammed VI on Wednesday deplored the persistence of serious "social inequalities" in the kingdom in a speech marking the 15th anniversary of his accession to the throne.

He called the anniversary an "opportunity" to "proceed to examen our conscience".

Spanish police said Sunday they had smashed a ring suspected of trafficking people, mainly Cubans, from Spain to the United States through Mexico, with the arrest of 14 people.