The daily noted that "gruesome video footage captured during the attacks shows one masked man deftly cutting the throat of a prone Moroccan officer, and another urinating on the body of a dead fireman."
    "The savage and premeditated style of the killings prompted speculation that Qaeda-style militants might have been involved" in those events, it said.
    On the death toll from the events, which was exaggerated by polisario, the reporter said that "the truth, it soon emerged, was virtually the opposite" of what was alleged by the separatists and the Algerian press.
    The New York Times recalled that "knife-wielding gangs from the camp attacked unarmed Moroccan security officers, killing 11 of them” according to the police, a toll confirmed by witnesses and human rights advocates.
     It also recalled that Morocco proposed autonomy to the Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty, an idea that found favor with the United States and France in particular.