The Spanish Interior Ministry has confirmed that nine members of a cell working to recruit fighters for the radical Islamist group, ISIS, were detained in Morocco on Thursday with the collaboration of the Spanish security forces.

The arrests were made in Fez, Tetuan and Fnideq, which is close to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the north coast of Morocco.

Those detained, all of whom are Moroccan, were accused of carrying out activities which include the financial support, recruitment and transport of jihadist fighters to be trained in order to fight in Syria and Iraq.

Meanwhile the Spanish Interior Ministry confirms that some of those arrested had "strong links" to Spain, where a similar operation in March saw eight people arrested on similar offenses in the cities of Malaga, the enclave of Melilla.

These arrests followed in the wake of the 14-year-old girl being arrested along with a 19-year-old companion in Ceuta on August 4 and sent to a juvenile detention center for attempting to join a Jihadist group she had made contact with over the internet.

The girl, whose parents said she had been 'normal' just a handful of months previously, had become radicalized after reading Jihadist websites.

In 2013 Spain was the EU country with the highest number of court cases and the highest percent of convictions for terrorist related offenses. Endit