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 SIDI MOUMEN, Morocco (AP) - Women lug jugs of water from a common tap as children play in the narrow and winding alleys. But it is the searing gazes of the jobless young men lounging outside corrugated-metal roof shacks that best tell the story of Carriere Thomas, a squalid shantytown in the Casablanca suburb of Sidi Moumen.
The encampment was home to 11 of 13 suicide bombers who detonated explosives-laden backpacks at five targets in Casablanca the night of May 16, 2003 — killing 32 bystanders.
Residents say the settlement, with 50,000 mostly illiterate and unemployed residents, was easy prey for recruiters from the Islamic extremist movement Salafiyah Jihadiya back then — and remains so, two years later.
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