Nineteen people were killed at one location, a Spanish restaurant near where the commercial interest section of the Spanish embassy is located, according to French broadcast reports.
A French correspondent said an unofficial count totaled 40 dead.
Eyewitnesses told of three car bombs, a suicide bomber and apparently a fifth bomb all being detonated within the space of 30 minutes beginning about 9 p.m. local time, in most cases close to Western buildings.
These attacks targeted the Safir Hotel, now known as the Farah Hotel, the Belgian consulate, an old Jewish cemetery, a club for the Jewish community and the restaurant "Casa de Espana" where most of the casualties died.
Ten of the dead were Moroccans, including the suicide bombers.
Morocco's Interior Minister Mostafa Sahel said the bomb attacks "bore the hallmarks of international terrorism." However, no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Observers pointed out that the bombings came a few days after suicide bomb attacks on residential compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 34. The terrorist group al Qaida is widely assumed to have been responsible for those attacks.
The Prime Minister of Spain Jose Maria Aznar was kept informed overnight of the information from the scene, Spanish media said. Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio told Spanish National Radio that "the first thing to be done is to analyze, to know what the origin of this attack is and, of course, from that take the appropriate decisions." She asked that the public "react calmly."
Morrocan Interior Minister Sahel and senior officials from Moroccan security services visited the scenes of destruction Friday night, including the "Casa de Espana" restaurant, the site with the highest number of victims. About 100 people were in the restaurant when the explosion there was detonated.
Sahel, along with Interior Minister Fouad Ali Himma, also visited the explosion scene at the Belgian consulate, according to the MAP news agency.
The Moroccan government created a crisis team to deal with the situation.
RNE Radio 1, in Madrid, reported that a witness at the Jewish Community Center site, Rafael Bermudez, said, "Very quickly there was panic. You heard the bombs and everything caught fire."
"There was blood everywhere. It was horrendous. There wasn't time to do anything," he said.
Sahel told reporters the attacks were perpetrated by "groups of suicide bombers" and about 10 of those killed in the attacks "were apparently suicide bombers."
He said three suspects of Moroccan nationality were arrested and one of the suicide bombers who survived the attacks "is currently being questioned by the police."
"This bears the hallmark of international terrorism," said the minister.
Asked about the identity of the suicide bombers, the minister said that at this point in time no accurate identification of the terrorists was yet available to him.
Copyright 2003 by United Press International.
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