Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa informed the country's security experts on Friday of a "current threat" against the north-west African country.

The alert demands the full mobilisation of the security services and the "redoubling of vigilance," the interior ministry said after the meeting.

Morocco has been on edge since a series of suicide bomb attacks earlier this year which killed a police officer and injured 45 people.

"Reliable information relayed in recent days to the interior ministry described the preparation of acts of terrorism in Morocco," a Moroccan security source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"Morocco is cooperating fully with foreign police services," the source said, adding that in the face of the threat, Morocco "is putting itself in a situation of extreme vigilance."

The ministry said in a statement that the tightening of security meant raising the level of mobilisation, increased controls and the best possible deployment of security forces.

The ministry did not give details about the threats but Mohammed Darif, an expert on Islamist extremism, said the security measures were due "to the regional and national context".

"Moroccan security agencies are concerned by what is happening in Britain and by the arrests in Spain," he told AFP.

In Britain eight people were detained after failed attacks in London and Glasgow last week and in Spain police arrested four Moroccans suspected of having links to an al-Qaeda cell.

But Darif said authorities also reacted to a video cassette, attributed to al-Qaeda, in which Moroccan Islamists threaten the kingdom.

A meeting earlier this week of the foreign ministers of Israel and Morocco in Paris and legislative elections in Morocco on September 7 "may push al-Qaeda to carry out its threats," he added.

Moroccan security officials have recently stepped up contacts with their Western counterparts.

FBI chief Robert S. Mueller was in Rabat last week and Germany's junior interior minister August Hanning discussed anti-terror measures with Moroccan colleagues this week.

On Thursday French anti-terror magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere said in Madrid that the terror threat in Europe and notably France and Morocco was "very high".