Moroccan police have busted a "terrorist" cell recruiting and sending volunteers to fight alongside Islamists in Syria and Iraq, arresting six people, the interior ministry said on Wednesday.

Among those arrested in the operation, carried out in the city of Fez in coordination with the domestic intelligence agency (DGST), was a Moroccan Islamist formerly held under the country's anti-terrorist law, according to the ministry statement.

Morocco's health minister has advised the country's Muslim faithful against making pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia this year, with the deadly MERS virus having killed nearly 300 people there so far.

Last week, the health ministry urged the sick and the frail to postpone any planned pilgrimages until 2015, and circulated among those determined to go information on the health risks from the virus.

The repression of peaceful protests in Morocco is growing, the country's main independent rights group said Wednesday, condemning the "false accusations" against political detainees.

The Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH), in its annual report, said that in addition to the "growing repression" of non-violent demonstrations, numerous protests had been banned, journalists subjected to physical aggression, and the February 20 pro-reform movement targeted.

Security forces drove back 1,000 African migrants who tried to scramble over a border fence from Morocco into the Spanish territory of Melilla on Saturday, officials said.

The crowd charged around dawn in the latest in a string of desperate attempts to breach the fence, one of Europe's two land borders with Africa.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb said Friday it was responsible for a recent attack on the home of Tunisia's interior minister that killed four policemen, the first such claim in the country.

"A group of lions... went to cut off the head of the criminal Lotfi Ben Jeddou at his home... and God allowed them to kill a number of his personal guards," an AQIM statement said.

Moroccan police have seized nearly 30 tons of hashish in Casablanca, one of the largest busts in the major cannabis exporting country in years, local media reported on Monday.

Two separate busts took place, with police raiding a warehouse in the port city on Saturday and seizing 12 tons of the drug, known locally as "chira", Moroccan daily Annass reported.

Fez may be better known as Morocco's historic center of Islamic learning, but the modern-day university is a rare bastion of radical leftist students, where tensions are simmering after bloody clashes with Islamists.

Under the campus arcades, as students queue for lunch outside the nearby restaurant, a group of young activists is locked in political discussion in the sweltering midday heat.

U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay said Thursday Morocco has improved its human rights record but must still work hard to shake off "old habits," such as torture.

Pillay, the first U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Morocco in 13 years, spoke at a news conference in Rabat at the end of a four-day visit.

More than 400 migrants stormed across a towering, triple-layer border fence from Morocco into the tiny Spanish territory of Melilla on Wednesday, one of the biggest crossings in nearly a decade, officials said.

About 1,000 sub-Saharans joined in the dawn attempt to enter Melilla, a tempting target for Africans desperate to reach Europe as it forms one of the only land crossings along with another Spanish territory, Ceuta, to the west.

Morocco's interior ministry announced on Monday the arrest of three people suspected of recruiting and financing jihadists to fight in Syria alongside al-Qaida "terrorist" groups.

Two of the suspects arrested in the central city of Fez "are implicated in recruiting Moroccan fighters for Syria," where rebels are battling the regime of President Bashar Assad, a statement said.