The toll from last night's suicide bombing of a club in Morocco has reached 41. At least 100 were wounded in the attacks which occured in Morocco's biggest city Casablanca, just hours after the United States said al Qaeda "killers" were poised to strike again.
The official MAP news agency quoted authorities as saying the latest toll was "almost final".
Earlier, Interior Minister Al Mustapha Sahel told reporters that 17 of the injured were in a serious condition, raising the possibility of a higher death toll.
MAP quoted Sahel as saying Morocco's King Mohammed was expected to visit Casablanca later on today.
Among the targets were a Jewish centre and Spanish club.
"International terrorism struck Casablanca tonight," Minister Al Mustapha Sahel was quoted as saying by 2M television in the early hours of Saturday.
As many as 10 of the dead may have been assailants, he added. Some used car bombs.
Diplomatic sources in the capital Rabat said at least 40 people were killed and about 100 wounded.
This was the first major attack of its type in Morocco in recent years and followed suicide bombings of expatriate housing compounds in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday that killed 34.
Like the Riyadh assault, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda was the prime suspect in Casablanca. A US official said it was "plausible" to suggest that the group Washington blames for the September 11 hijacks was behind the latest coordinated attack.
Sahel, quoted by MAP, said three Moroccans were arrested and were being questioned - among them one who was suspected of attempting a suicide bombing and who had been wounded.
The attacks "bear the mark of international terrorism", Sahel said, noting their "simultaneity". But the senior Moroccan security source said that, for now, there were no clear clues.
Sahel said the bombers struck at the Hotel Safir in the old heart of the city, a Jewish community centre, an old Jewish cemetery and the Casa de Espana Spanish social club. Local journalists said the bulk of the dead were at the club.
"There are body parts all over the place," Moroccan journalist Aboubakr Jamai told the BBC, describing the scene at the club popular with Spanish business people and diplomats.
Witnesses said attackers slit the porter's throat on their way in and that at least one young attacker had blown himself up with grenades strapped to his belt.
Moroccans had been enjoying a holiday weekend and were still celebrating last week's birth of King Mohammed's son and heir.
The Belgian embassy in Rabat said two policemen outside its Casablanca consulate were killed and a security guard wounded. The five-storey building, which stands across the street from a Jewish-owned Italian restaurant, was badly damaged.
A police officer outside the Jewish centre said the attack there was "apparently carried out by suicide bombers who were wearing explosives around their belts". He had no information on casualties.
The single-storey building was badly damaged, with blood stains visible on the facade up to five metres (16 feet) high. Broken glass, bricks and rubble littered the street.
MAP said three of the blasts were car bombs. Witnesses counted eight dead at the hotel.
In Madrid, a Spanish diplomat quoted colleagues in Morocco as saying three people with explosives entered the Spanish restaurant. Spain was a vocal supporter of the US war on Iraq and has had fraught relations with Morocco, where Madrid once exercised colonial powers.
Spanish diplomats said one of the explosions had hit either the office or residence of the U.S. consul, which lies close to the Belgian mission. In Washington, a State Department spokesman said no U.S. government facility was hit, however.
In February, Morocco jailed three Saudis for 10 years for taking part in what the court found was an al Qaeda plot to attack US and British warships in the Gibraltar Strait.
In August last year, the authorities - who keep tight control over Islamist activity in the kingdom - arrested 30 radical Islamists for allegedly killing several Moroccans.
Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a truck bomb attack on a synagogue in another North African country, Tunisia, in April last year in which 20 people - including 14 German tourists - were killed. Neighbouring Algeria has been riven by Islamist violence against the government for more than a decade.
On the Atlantic coast about 60 miles (95 km) southwest of the capital Rabat, Casablanca's population is officially three million but may sprawl to nearly double that, locals say.
Home to one of the world's biggest mosques and immortalised in the 1942 Hollywood film of the same name, it retains little of its old oriental charm. Millions of young migrants from rural poverty struggle to make their way in teeming suburbs that have become recruiting grounds for radical Islamic militants.