Morocco barred Dutch abortion rights activists Thursday from docking their campaign ship to spread awareness about safe abortion methods in a Muslim country that bans the practice.

Women on Waves announced last week its intention to send their ship into the Moroccan port of Smir after visits to traditionally Roman Catholic countries Spain, Portugal and Ireland at the invitation of local women's groups. Such visits began 11 years ago, the BBC reported.

The group says it intends to raise awareness about the use of pills for medical abortions and that it would carry out terminations of pregnancies aboard its own ship on international waters.

Earlier Thursday, Marlies Schellekens, a doctor from Women on Waves, said that Smir harbour was "totally blocked by warships so no one can get in," a day after Rabat said the activists would be barred from arriving by sea.

Rebecca Gomperts, the founder of Women on Waves, told the BBC the group planned to launch "a surprise" in response, but she did not provide further details.

But Moroccan sources later said Women on Waves had actually sent only a yacht into Smir several days ago rather than their usual larger main campaign ship in the apparent expectation that Morocco would not let the group in anyway.

"The yacht has now left Smir to head back home. It was a publicity stunt," an official source said.

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"The organizers took everyone for a ride ... The people (in the yacht) stayed aboard and did not complete immigration procedures that would have allowed them to enter Moroccan territory."

Women on Waves had been invited to Morocco by local rights group Alternative Movement for Individual Freedoms (MALI).

According to the BBC, Women on Waves wanted to publicize the fact that an abortion-inducement drug is already available to women in Morocco, but most are unaware of it.

The group told the BBC it had also launched a hotline for women to obtain information about contraception and abortion.

In Morocco, as in other Muslim states, abortion is illegal and punishable by up to 20 years in prison. But hundreds of illegal abortions are carried out daily in underground clinics or using herbal medicines, sometimes causing death or injury. Women on Waves told the BBC between 600 and 800 abortions take place every day in Morocco.

Each year hundreds of Moroccan single mothers are forced to abandon or give up their babies for adoption because of the stigma linked to abortion and pre-marital pregnancy.

"I understand that (the visit) is seen as a provocation by some religious groups. But this is about women's health. It has nothing to do with religion," Gomperts, told AFP by phone earlier this week.

On Wednesday Interior Minister Mohand Laenser, a secular member of the government led since December by moderate Islamists, said the Women on Waves would not be allowed into Morocco. "The organizers have never contacted us to seek permission to visit Morocco," Laenser told Reuters.

The Moroccan Association Against Clandestine Abortion said in June that legislation on abortion was out of step with social realities in the country and the number of unsafe abortions showed the need for a political commitment to legal reform.

Organizers of an all-gay cruise in June said Moroccan officials had canceled what would have been the first visit of its kind to a Muslim country.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Updated at 5:40 p.m. ET: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, National Intelligence Director James Clapper and other top diplomatic and security officials will huddle this week with lawmakers for a closed-door meeting on growing anti-U.S. violence in the Middle East and northern Africa, officials told NBC News on Tuesday.

The classified briefing was put together for House members after al-Qaida in the Maghreb, the North African branch of the terrorist group, published a call for followers to launch attacks on U.S. embassies and to kill U.S. diplomats.

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The statement appeared to have been published Saturday, but it didn't come to widespread Western attention until Tuesday, when the Middle East monitoring service IntelCenter alerted its clients to the threat's appearance on a militant website. It called for attacks on U.S. interests around the world, but especially in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania.

The statement called the assassination last week of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, a "gift" that would "bring the Americans to the path of salvation and stop their war against Muslims."

Stevens was killed in a raid on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, along with three consulate staff members.

Clinton didn't mention the briefing in remarks to reporters in Mexico City, where she is holding talks with Mexican leaders on drug-interdiction strategies, but she said: "We are taking aggressive steps to protect our people and our consulates and embassies around the world.

"We are reviewing our security posture at every post and working with host governments to be sure they know what our security needs are wherever necessary," she said. "I think that it is important at this moment for leaders to put themselves on the right side of this debate — to speak out clearly and unequivocally against violence, whoever incites it or conducts it "

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The rise in violence has coincided with anger in the Muslim world after the publication on YouTube of a short trailer for an unreleased movie called "Innocence of Muslims," which depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a gay, wife-beating child abuser. At least 28 deaths — including those of Stevens and the three other Americans last week — have been attributed to riots and violence in at least 20 countries in reaction to the video.

In Afghanistan, NATO forces enacted tighter security measures Tuesday after rioters attacked police on a road to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and a suicide bomber blew up a bus near the Kabul airport, killing 12 foreign workers in an attack that Islamist militants said was in retaliation for the blasphemous video.

Col. Thomas Collins, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO-led contingent overseeing security in Afghanistan, told NBC News that the measures would put a temporary halt to joint operations with Afghan forces unless they were approved by a regional commander at the level of a general.

"We did a very thorough assessment," Collins said. "We looked at where we are right now with this video being out and some heightened tensions.

"We just thought it would be smartest on a temporary basis to reduce the amount of exposure of our troops in certain areas," he said.

More than 50 international troops have been killed this year in so-called green-on-blue attacks carried out by Afghan forces or militants disguised in Afghan uniforms.

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Two U.S. Marine Corps personnel were killed and two others were seriously hurt in a helicopter crash in Morocco, according to a statement by U.S. Africa Command.

The statement said that an MV-22 Osprey operating from the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima crashed in a Royal Moroccan military training area southwest of Agadir, Morocco, while participating in “Exercise African Lion,” Wednesday. 

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“Four U.S. Marine Corps personnel were on the aircraft at the time of the incident. Two personnel died as a result of their injuries sustained in the crash,” it said. “The two other personnel were severely injured in the crash and are being medically evacuated for further treatment.”

The MV-22 Osprey was assigned to a Marine squadron based at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) New River, N.C, the statement added.

“The cause of the incident is under investigation,” the statement said.

An annual event, Exercise African Lion 2012 began on April 8.

The statement said it was a “theater security cooperation exercise led by U.S. Marine Forces Africa and is conducted annually between the U.S. military and the Kingdom of Morocco to further develop joint and combined capabilities.”

The exercise is designed to improve field and aviation training, humanitarian civic assistance, amphibious landings, intelligence capacity building, and command post and peace support operations.

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Online outrage spread Thursday with calls for Morocco to change its laws for women after the suicide of Amina Filali, a 16-year-old girl who was forced to marry her rapist, who beat her.

The government says changes are in the works.

Among the comments, most in Arabic or French, posted to Facebook pages: “We are all Amina Filali” and “RIP Amina.”

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“Amina must be the last,” said the translation of one commenter identified as Nouri Rupert.

“Repeal immediately paragraph 2 of Article 475,” said Aniko M.E. Boehler near Marrakesh.

Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code allows for the "kidnapper" of a minor to marry his victim to escape prosecution, The Associated Press reported.

"The article 475 is an embarrassment to Morocco's international image of modernity and democracy," Fouzia Assouli, president of the Democratic League for Women's Rights, or LDDF, told the BBC.

"In Morocco, the law protects public morality but not the individual," Assouli said, adding that legislation outlawing all forms of violence against women, including rape within marriage, has been held up since 2006.

A sit-in is planned at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at Parliament in Rabat, according to some posters, including SlutWalk Morocco on Facebook.

"This is a painful incident ... This is an issue we can't afford to ignore," Communication Minister and government spokesman Mustafa el-Khalfi said, Reuters reported.

"She was raped twice -- once by the rapist and the second time by marrying him ... We plan harsher sentences against rapists and we will launch ... a debate about law 475 to reform it," he told reporters.

In conservative parts of Morocco, it is unacceptable for a woman to lose her virginity before marriage - and the dishonor is hers and her family's even if she is raped, the BBC reported.

Filali came from the small northern town of Larache, near Tangiers.

The legal age of marriage in Morocco is 18, but the law allows for special circumstances.

Filali's father, Lachen Filali, told the online newspaper goud.ma that when he reported his daughter’s rape, "the prosecutor advised my daughter to marry; he said: 'Go and make the marriage contract.’”

When Amina Filali later told her family her husband was beating her, local media said, her mother told her to be patient.

She took rat poison and died Saturday after six months of marriage.

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