CASABLANCA: French wheat exporters will supply Morocco with two thirds of its soft wheat needs, or 3.5 million metric tons, in the 2025-2026 season, Philippe Heusele, international head at French grain industry group Intercereales, said on Tuesday.
Morocco is expected to import 5.5 million tons of soft wheat, its main staple, this market year from June to the end of May 2026, according to estimates by Moroccan traders and French grains association Synacomex.
Morocco has reported below-average harvests in recent years because of drought. This season it reported a soft wheat harvest of 2.4 million tons.
Despite the weak domestic harvest, stockpiles remain at a “comfortable level,” covering more than three months of industrial millers’ needs, said Abdelkader Alaoui, president of the FNM industrial milling federation.
Moroccan traders attending an Intercereales conference in Casablanca see the French harvest as best positioned, given its availability and proximity to Moroccan ports compared with other origins such as the Black Sea region and Argentina.
“We are also looking at Russian, German and Polish wheat as well as Argentina, where prices are interesting,” said Omar Yacoubi, head of FNCL, Morocco’s grain traders federation.
From June to September, Morocco imported 1.5 million tons of soft wheat, including 996,368 tons from France, followed by the United States (94,688 tons), Russia (85,499 tons) and Lithuania (63,000 tons), FNCL data shows.
France to supply two thirds of Morocco’s soft wheat needs, industry group says
https://arab.news/j3xzn
France to supply two thirds of Morocco’s soft wheat needs, industry group says
- Morocco is expected to import 5.5 million tons of soft wheat
- Morocco has reported below-average harvests in recent years because of drought
Syria gunman who killed Americans was to be fired from security forces for ‘extremism’: ministry
DAMASCUS: Syria’s interior ministry said on Sunday that the gunman who killed three Americans in the central Palmyra region the previous day was a member of the security forces who was to have been fired for extremism.
Two US troops and a civilian interpreter died in the attack on Saturday, which the US Central Command said had been carried out by an alleged Daesh group (IS) militant who was then killed.
The Syrian authorities “had decided to fire him” from the security forces before the attack for holding “extremist Islamist ideas” and had planned to do so on Sunday, interior ministry spokesman Noureddine Al-Baba told state television.
A Syrian security official told AFP on Sunday that “11 members of the general security forces were arrested and brought in for questioning after the attack.”
The official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the gunman had belonged to the security forces “for more than 10 months and was posted to several cities before being transferred to Palmyra.”
Palmyra, home to UNESCO-listed ancient ruins, was once controlled by IS during the height of its territorial expansion in Syria.
The incident is the first of its kind reported since Islamist-led forces overthrew longtime Syrian ruler Bashar Assad in December last year, and rekindled the country’s ties with the United States.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the soldiers “were conducting a key leader engagement” in support of counter-terrorism operations when the attack occurred, while US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said the ambush targeted “a joint US-Syrian government patrol.”
US President Donald Trump called the incident “an Daesh attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” using another term for the group.
He said the three other US troops injured in the attack were “doing well.”
