Lahbib Mohamed Abdelaziz, son of the former Polisario front leader killed in a drone strike

The Polisario Front announced on Sunday, June 7, the death of Lahbib Mohamed Abdelaziz, son of the former secretary-general of the movement, Mohamed Abdelaziz, as well as two of his comrades-in-arms, in a strike attributed to a Moroccan drone in the buffer zone east of the security wall in Western Sahara. According to a statement from the Ministry of Defense of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), Lahbib Mohamed Abdelaziz, born in 1989, was a member of the National Secretariat of the Front and commander of the First Campaign Reserve Brigade. He is reported to have fallen during fighting against positions of the Royal Armed Forces (FAR). According to the Moroccan site Yabiladi, which cites the Polisario’s version, the three men were coordinating attacks against positions of the Moroccan army at the time. The operation was described as an attempt at an armed incursion east of the defense wall.

The Presidency of the SADR declared a national mourning of three days starting from June 7 at 8:00 PM local time, honoring the memory of a fighter who fell, according to the official statement, “in the face of the enemy and without ever retreating.”

A leader seen as a successor to Brahim Ghali

Lahbib Mohamed Abdelaziz was considered one of the rising figures of the Polisario and a possible contender for the succession of secretary-general Brahim Ghali, who is 78 years old. At the 16th congress of the Front, held in January 2023 in the Dakhla camp on Algerian territory, he was elected to the National Secretariat, the executive body composed of 28 members. In 2024, Brahim Ghali appointed him commander of the Reserve Army, replacing Mohamed Lamine Ould El Bouhali, according to Yabiladi.

His father, Mohamed Abdelaziz, led the Polisario Front from 1976 until his death in May 2016. He entrusted his son, as early as October 2013, with the command of a policing unit of the Polisario, a formation presented as part of the elite forces of the movement. An article by Yabiladi published on June 8, citing a former member of the Polisario, raises questions about the exact circumstances of the death, indicating that the deceased was commanding the Reserve Army and did not hold an operational role involving a frontline presence.

The strike occurred on the same day that Staffan de Mistura, the personal envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Western Sahara, arrived in the camps of Tindouf, in Algerian territory. The Italian-Swedish envoy began a regional tour on the evening of June 7, with the first stop being the Sahrawi area, to meet with Polisario leaders, members of the Advisory Council, and representatives of Sahrawi civil society, according to the SPS agency.

On Monday, June 8, Staffan de Mistura met with the Sahrawi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohamed Yeslem Beissat, as well as Sidi Mohamed Omar, the Polisario representative to the United Nations. He was then to continue his tour to Algiers and Nouakchott, as part of a series of consultations aimed at reviving the UN political process, which has been stalled since the resumption of hostilities in November 2020. During a Security Council meeting in April 2026, de Mistura called on the Polisario to make the “necessary concessions” to facilitate a resolution to the conflict.

An armed conflict resumed since November 2020

Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony of 266,000 square kilometers bordering the Atlantic, is the subject of a dispute between Morocco, which controls about 80% of the territory and proposes an autonomy plan under its sovereignty, and the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria, which demands a referendum on self-determination. The territory is classified by the UN as a “non-self-governing territory,” in the absence of a final settlement.

After nearly thirty years of ceasefire, hostilities resumed in November 2020 following the deployment of Moroccan troops in the buffer zone of Guerguerat, in the far south of the territory. Since then, armed incidents have been regularly reported in the buffer zone, east of the sand wall approximately 2,700 kilometers long erected by Morocco. The death of Lahbib Mohamed Abdelaziz is the highest-ranking death announced by the Polisario since the resumption of fighting.