Algeria on Tuesday branded as unacceptable comments published by official Moroccan media in response to criticism of its human rights policy in Western Sahara, in the latest barbed exchange between Rabat and Algiers.

The insults by the North African arch-rivals come ahead of a report to be presented to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday by special envoy Christopher Ross, who visited the region this month.

In Morocco's drug capital Tangiers, a pioneering clinic is trying to help addicts fight a rising habit in a conservative Muslim state where many would prefer the problem stay underground.

"I don't want to steal from people to get my fix," Mohammed tells a group of around 30 hard drug users who have come to the Hasnouna clinic seeking support.

A Moroccan appeals court on Monday reduced the sentence of a journalist convicted on Syria-linked terror charges from four to three years, his lawyer told Agence France Presse.

The court reduced journalist Moustapha Hasnaoui's sentence by one year, lawyer Khaled al-Idriss said, after he was convicted on terror charges in July.

A Moroccan man convicted of abducting, raping and killing a 32-month-old girl has been sentenced to death, the official MAP news agency reported on Friday.

The 30-year-old man, himself the father of a little girl, was also ordered to pay the toddler's family 200,000 dirhams (17,000 euros) in compensation, according to the verdict issued Thursday.

A Moroccan court on Friday jailed a teenager for three months for threatening to kill U.S. President Barack Obama on Twitter, judicial sources said.

The 17-year-old identified as Soufiane I. pleaded guilty at a Casablanca court to "electronic crimes" and "calling for violence via electronic media," after posting the death threat last year.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is to visit Morocco in early November during a tour of the Maghreb region, a diplomatic source said on Thursday.

Kerry's first visit to the North African country since being appointed chief U.S. diplomat will take place on November 7 and 8, the source said, requesting anonymity.

Morocco on Wednesday prevented some 50 migrants from reaching the Spanish territory of Ceuta by sea, officials said, the latest in a wave of desperate bids by Africans to reach Europe.

"Some 50 illegal migrants tried to reach the occupied territory of Septa this morning (Wednesday) by swimming or in makeshift boats," the governor of Tangiers said in a statement, using the Moroccan name for Spain's tiny north African enclave.

Moroccan journalist Ali Anouzla, arrested last month and charged with aiding "terrorism" in a case that has provoked an international outcry, applied for bail at a court hearing on Tuesday.

"We have asked that he be granted bail while the proceedings continue. The judge must make a decision within five days," Anouzla's lawyer Hassan Semlali told Agence France Presse.

A French court on Tuesday gave the go-ahead for a Franco-Moroccan gay couple to marry, going against a government ruling that homosexuals from Morocco and 10 other countries cannot tie the knot.

France legalized same-sex marriage in May after months of intense and sometimes violent protests, and the couple -- Dominique and Mohammed -- immediately got to work planning their official union for September in the town of Jacob-Bellecombette in the Alps.

Bloody clashes erupted between police and pro-independence protesters in Western Sahara, a human rights group said Monday, as the U.N. envoy wrapped up his latest visit to the disputed territory.

The weekend clashes, in the towns of Laayoune and Smara, coincided with a three-day trip to the territory by Christopher Ross in a new bid to push for a peaceful resolution to the decades-old conflict.