City said to be terrorist breeding ground

TETOUAN, Morocco, Nov. 25 (UPI) -- A Moroccan seaport 3,000 miles from Iraq has become one of the world's most fertile recruiting grounds for jihadists, U.S. officials say.

In the past eight months a group of young men, all worshippers at the same mosque, have left their homes in Tetouan, a few miles from the Strait of Gibraltar, to become suicide bombers in Iraq, The Daily Telegraph of London reports.

U.S. intelligence traced at least nine of the men responsible for recent suicide missions in and around Baghdad to Tetouan and its surrounding area, the newspaper said.

Local reports suggest another 21 individuals have left the area to seek martyrdom, following in the footsteps of five other men from Tetouan who blew themselves up in the Madrid suburb of Leganes when cornered by police in April 2004. Police believed they played a part in the train bombings in the Spanish capital in March 2004.

The young men, all in their 20s, became disillusioned with the daily struggle to earn, their families say.