Moroccan customs authorities on Thursday incinerated 9.5 tonnes of cannabis resin in a suburb of Casablanca, official media reported, days after record hashish hauls in neighboring Spain.

The drugs, which were seized in two separate operations last year by customs authorities at Casablanca port, were burned in the presence of government officials, police and members of the royal gendarmerie, the MAP news agency reported.

Spanish police said Thursday they busted a network of Moroccan and Chinese nationals who laundered hundreds of thousands of euros a week in drug money.

Officers arrested two Chinese nationals, one suspect from Hong Kong and three Moroccans in raids at locations including a major Chinese trading estate near Madrid, a police statement said.

Spanish police said Wednesday they had uncovered a racket in which babies born to needy mothers in Morocco and the Spanish north African enclave of Melilla were sold to wealthy families in Spain during the 1970s and 1980s.

Police have identified 28 cases where newborns were taken from their mothers and sold to families in mainland Spain who could not have children, for between 1,200 and 6,000 euros ($1,600 and $8,000), police said in a statement.

Hundreds of pro-independence Sahrawi activists marched in Laayoune at the weekend, the Western Sahara's largest city, in the biggest protest in several decades, Moroccan press reported Monday.

Some 500 people marched peacefully late on Saturday afternoon, but violence broke out in the evening after the protest, wounding 21 policemen, according to several papers.

Spanish police have seized 52 tonnes of hashish, a European record, and arrested three people as part of an investigation into a drug trafficking ring, police said Monday.

The drugs were found at an industrial warehouse in the southern city of Cordoba stored in 1,700 individual packages which each weighed about 30 kilos, police said in a statement.

Spanish and Moroccan emergency services on Saturday rescued 66 African immigrants trying to cross the Strait of Gibraltar in flimsy boats.

A spokesman for maritime emergency services in Tarifa on the southern tip of Spain told Agence France Presse that nine men had been rescued by Spanish authorities and another 57 people by Morocco.

Spanish police announced Friday they have seized a massive 32 tonnes of hashish hidden in a truck transporting melons from Morocco, one of the largest hauls on record in Spain.

Police found the hashish, with an estimated street value of 50 million euros ($65 million), when they searched a refrigerated truck carrying melons from the Moroccan port of Tangiers.

Thousands took to the streets of Rabat and Casablanca on Wednesday demanding jobs and higher pay during May Day demonstrations marked by tension, with a large security contingent deployed in the capital.

Several thousand people marched up Rabat's central boulevard around midday, waving Moroccan and Berber flags, holding placards and chanting slogans, some of them strongly critical of the government.

At least 40 people including eight policemen were injured when a pro-independence demonstration on the disputed Western Sahara turned violent, police and Amnesty International said on Saturday.

Around 100 people took part in Friday's protest, according to an Agence France Presse correspondent in the Western Sahara city of Laayoune a day after a U.N. Security Council resolution renewed the mandate of the Western Sahara peacekeeping force known as MINURSO.

The United States has withdrawn a demand that the United Nations start human rights investigations in disputed Western Sahara following furious lobbying by Morocco, diplomats said Tuesday.

Morocco, which has occupied Western Sahara since the 1970s, had condemned a U.S. move to put the demand in a U.N. Security Council resolution on the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the North African territory to be voted on Thursday.