The group's "aim is to reach the Atlantic from the Sahara. They (the members of the group) spoke about it in their chat rooms," it cautioned.

    Fox News added, in this regard, that "trying to offer their services to the Polisario or even penetrating it are part of its strategy."

    Citing North African security sources, the channel said that fifty-nine Polisario officials and soldiers have recently been linked to AQIM.

    Walid Phares, a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, and a Fox News terrorism analyst says that given the fact that AQIM has already successfully penetrated the bordering countries such as Mali, Mauritania and Niger, it has "certainly showed interest in moving its cells or recruiting in the Sahara (...) It aims at creating something between a Somalia and a Yemen in the whole area."

    Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb which was founded in Algeria has a long and deadly record of attacks in the region, the channel noted.

    In this respect, it pointed out that in 2007 the group was behind a double suicide bombing in the Algerian capital which killed 41 people including 17 United Nations workers.

    Phares stresses that "there is concern about what AQIM is doing but not about what it can and will do across the region.”