A Moroccan pilot missing since his plane crashed during a mission over Yemen has been found dead and his body returned home on Tuesday, Saudi official media reported.

First Lieutenant Yassine Bahti, 26, is the first airman to die since a Saudi-led coalition began bombing Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen on March 26.

Moroccan King Mohammed VI has ordered that laws restricting abortion be loosened, allowing it in the case of rape, incest, danger to the mother's health or fetal malformation.

Debate erupted in this North African kingdom earlier this year over reforming the penal code, which banned abortion except in cases of a threat to the mother's life. The king had his justice minister, religious affairs minister and the head of the state human rights organization study the issue.

Morocco said it was hopeful of finding its pilot alive after his F-16 crashed during a sortie for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, with the armed forces saying there was no evidence of his death.

Huthi rebels claimed they shot down the fighter at the weekend but the coalition denied rebel fire was responsible, saying the crash was due to a technical problem or human error.

A technical fault or human error caused the crash of a Moroccan warplane in Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition said on Tuesday, denying rebel fire was responsible.

Yemen's Shiite Huthi rebels said on Monday that they shot down a coalition warplane at the weekend, shortly after Morocco reported one of its fighters missing on a sortie.

Yemeni rebels said on Monday they shot down a fighter jet as Saudi-led coalition air strikes intensified a day ahead of a hoped-for five-day humanitarian truce.

Morocco announced that one of its warplanes taking part in operations against the rebels was missing along with its pilot, and that a search was underway.

Health Minister El Hossein Louardi came out in support of lifting Morocco's ban on abortion, saying women should control their own bodies, in an interview published on Friday.

He spoke to the weekly Tel Quel amid a debate sparked by the fact that hundreds of illegal abortions take place in the kingdom every day.

The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday pushed Morocco and pro-independence campaigners in Western Sahara to negotiate a settlement to the decades-old dispute over the former Spanish territory.

The 15-member council unanimously adopted a resolution that extended the mandate of the U.N. peace mission MINURSO and called for a "more intensive and substantive phase of negotiations."

Morocco arrested four people Tuesday in the Western Sahara after they allegedly issued a fatwa authorizing the burning alive of a person they accused of rejecting Islam, the interior ministry said.

It said the four members of a "terrorist cell" detained in the disputed territory's main city of Laayoune had planned to "carry out dangerous terrorist crimes" in Morocco.

Mauritania and Algeria were embroiled in a diplomatic row Monday after the tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats over a contentious news article on drugs being smuggled from Morocco.

Mauritanian online news portal Al-Bayan has angered the authorities in Nouakchott by publishing an article claiming they had complained to the United Nations that Morocco was flooding Mauritania with drugs.

An overhaul of Morocco's penal code has triggered a lively debate on morality in the conservative North African nation, where homosexuality and sexual relations outside marriage are forbidden.

But calls to legalize extra-marital sex or abolish the death penalty appear to be a step too far for authorities in the country, where Islam is the state religion.