Ahmed Alid, 45, who had sought asylum in Britain, killed his 70-year-old victim after approaching him from behind on a road in Hartlepool, prosecutors said.

The incident happened during the early hours of October 15 last year after Alid had attacked his housemate with two knives, they added.

After his arrest, Alid told detectives he had committed the acts because of the conflict in Gaza, and in revenge for Israel killing innocent children, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service, CPS said.

The 45-year-old Moroccan blamed Britain for creating Israel, CPS said.

Alid said if he had a machine gun, and more weapons, he would have killed more people.

"By his own admission, Ahmed Alid would have killed more people on that day if he had been able to," Nick Price, Head of the CPS Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, said in a statement.

"Whatever his views were on the conflict in Gaza, this was a man who chose to attack two innocent people with a knife, and the consequences were devastating."

Alid had first used two knives to attack his sleeping housemate, to whom he had become aggressive after learning of his conversion to Christianity, stabbing him six times while shouting "Allahu Akbar," or "god is greatest," the CPS said.

The 32-year-old housemate, one of five asylum seekers who shared the property, managed to fight him off and another occupant came to his aid. Alid left the house with one of the knives and walked towards the center of Hartlepool.

He passed Terence Carney on the opposite side of the road before circling back and attacking him from behind.

Alid stabbed Carney six times in the chest, abdomen and back. He died shortly after police arrived.

Following his interview with police, Alid attacked the two female detectives, with one suffering injuries to her shoulder and wrist.

Alid was found guilty at Teeside Crown Court of murder, attempted murder and two counts of assaulting an emergency worker. He will be sentenced on May 17, when the judge will decide if his actions were related to terrorism.

The protest — the latest large-scale rally of its kind in the North African nation — was called by Al Adl Wal Ihssane, an Islamist group that is banned but tolerated.

The group also organized similar gatherings in the capital Rabat and the port of Tangier.

The demonstrations were held to mark the last Friday in the holy fasting month of Ramadan, and Quds (Jerusalem) Day when annual rallies in support of the Palestinians are held around the region.

"Normalization is a hoax!" and "Down with the occupation!," protesters chanted in Casablanca, with the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas about to enter its seventh month.

In late 2020, Morocco established diplomatic ties with Israel under the United States-brokered Abraham Accords which saw similar moves by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

As part of the deal, Rabat received Washington's recognition of its claim to sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

Since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began on October 7, large-scale demonstrations in the North African kingdom have called for the abrogation of the normalization deal.

"We came to say 'no' to the barbaric massacres Israel is committing against Palestinians, to the destruction in Gaza... and to the silence of the Arab states," protest organizer Mohammed Riahi told AFP.

Casablanca lawyer Mohammed Ennouini, 51, said: "Normalizing ties between Arab states and Israel gives it the green light to keep killing civilians."

Rabat has officially denounced what it said were "flagrant violations of the provisions of international law" by Israel in its war against Hamas, but has not given any indication that normalization with Israel would be undone.

According to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, at least 33,091 people have been killed in the territory during the war.

It began after Hamas's October 7 attack which left 1,170 people, mostly civilians, dead in southern Israel, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Diaz was included in Walid Regragui's 24-man roster for the matches against Angola and Mauritania this month, according to a statement released by Morocco’s Football Federation.

The 24-year-old Los Blancos winger represented Spain in one game and scored against Lithuania in 2021.

FIFA rules say players can switch international allegiance when they have made fewer than three appearances for a country before the age of 21. They should also not have played for that nation for at least three years.

Diaz, a former AC Milan winger, has produced fine displays for Real Madrid this season, having scored eight goals in 32 games across all competitions.

Moroccan candidate, Ambassador Omar Zniber, received 30 votes, and his South African opponent, Ambassador Mxolisi Nkosi, secured 17 in a secret ballot in Geneva.

Prior to the vote, Nkosi said Morocco was the "antithesis of what the council stands for" and said the election of the North African nation would undermine the body's credibility.

Morocco, in turn, accused South Africa and some other African states of undermining its efforts to hold the position, a prestigious but mostly symbolic post.

"The Kingdom's election, supported by a large number of countries around the globe in spite of Algeria's and South Africa's efforts to counter it, demonstrates the trust and the credibility inspired by Morocco's external actions...," the Moroccan foreign ministry said.

The vote marks a rare public dispute in the African group whose turn it was to lead the 47-member council. It normally strives to take decisions as a bloc.

The dispute in part revolves around Morocco's sovereignty claim over Western Sahara, where the Algeria-backed Polisario Front is seeking independence. Rabat has denied allegations of rights abuses against its opponents there.

As part of a broader strategy, Morocco has been courting countries, including African neighbors, to build support for its policies for the former Spanish territory.

It has failed to garner the support of South Africa, which helped organize an event to promote self-determination for the Sahrawi people in Geneva last year.

Rights groups say Morocco's new role should prompt it to safeguard human rights at the highest level.

"In particular, Morocco must refrain from intimidating or carrying out reprisals against human rights defenders engaging with the U.N.," said Tess McEvoy, the Co-Director of the New York office of the International Service for Human Rights advocacy group.

The U.N. Human Rights Council, which convenes several times a year, is the only intergovernmental global body designed to protect human rights worldwide. It can increase scrutiny of countries' human rights records and authorize probes.

Overnight Sunday to Monday, more than 1,110 people were detained in the cities of Nador, M'diq and Fnideq during multiple operations carried out by the army and security forces, the general staff of the armed forces said in a statement.

The army said that the 175 migrants apprehended in Nador, close to the border with Melilla, were from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Yemen.

It did not provide nationalities for the other detained migrants.

Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish territories on the northern Moroccan coast, are the European Union's only land borders on the African continent and are frequently the target of migrants hoping to reach mainland Europe.

Spain and Morocco signed a cooperation agreement on migration in February last year, while Morocco has received hundreds of millions of dollars from the EU in recent years to help tackle the issue.

Another significant migration route runs through Spain's Canary Islands, with migrants departing from the coast of Morocco and the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

In 2023, the archipelago faced its worst migration crisis since 2006. Between January 1 and November 15, 32,436 migrants arrived on the islands, a 118 percent increase on the same period in 2022, according to figures from the ministry of the interior.

Hundreds died last year attempting to make the perilous sea journey from as far away as Senegal.