Rescue workers carry a body recovered from the rubble of an earthquake-damaged house in Imi N’Tala village near Amizmiz on September 13, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The stench of death wafted through the village of Imi N’Tala high up in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, where last week’s catastrophic earthquake razed the hamlet’s mud-brick buildings and killed dozens of residents.

On Tuesday, bulldozers, rescues crews and Moroccan first responders dug through the wreckage around the clock in the hopes of finding the eight to 10 corpses still underneath.

“The mountain was split in half and started falling. Houses were fully destroyed,” a local man, Ait Ougadir Al Houcine, said as crews worked to recover bodies, including his sister’s. “Some people lost all their cattle. We have nothing but the clothes we’re wearing. Everything is gone.”

The scene in Imi N’Tala, which is mainly home to herders and farmers and lost 96 people to Friday’s earthquake, mirrored the situation in dozens of communities along the treacherous mountain roads south of Marrakech. Men in donated djellabas — long, loose robes common to Morocco — neatly arranged their prayer rugs atop dust and rocks when they were unable to find open space and solid ground. Donkeys brayed as they passed people covering their noses to block the smell of decomposition.

The death and injury counts have risen as responders have reached more of these remote villages, where they dug up bodies and sent people to hospitals. Moroccan authorities reported 2,901 deaths and several thousand injuries as of Tuesday. The United Nations estimated that the magnitude 6.8 quake had affected some 300,000 people.

On Tuesday, King Mohammed VI visited a hospital a hospital and donated blood in Marrakech, which is about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Imi N’Tala. And aid finally arrived in Imi N’Tala the nearby communities of Anougal, Imi N’Isli and Igourdane. White and yellow tents lined the partially paved roads, pyramids of water bottles and milk cartons were stacked nearby, and Moroccans from the country’s larger cities handed out clay tagine pots and neatly packed bags of food aid.

Camera crews from France, Spain and Qatar’s Al Jazeera set up as Moroccan emergency responders — along with crews from Qatar, Spain and international nongovernmental organizations — jackhammered through rocks to recover a woman’s body from under a crumbling house that looked like it could fall at any moment.

She likely died because — unlike the buildings that fell in Turkey and Syria’s earthquake earlier this year — the mud bricks used to build homes in Imi N’Tala left little space for air that trapped people would need to survive, said Patrick Villadry of the French rescue crew, ULIS.

“When we dig, we look for someone alive. From there, we don’t ask ourselves questions. If they’re alive, great. If they’re dead, it’s a shame,” he said, noting that recovering the dead was important for Moroccan families.

Morocco has limited the amount of earthquake aid allowed into the country and allowed response crews from only four countries — Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar — as well as NGOs. Villadry’s five-person, four-dog crew from Nice was among the few French NGOs to have made it to the disaster site. It arrived Saturday, he said.

Though the government has cautioned that poorly coordinated aid “would be counterproductive,” the explanation has prompted skepticism among some Moroccans, including Brahim Ait Blasri, who watched the recovery attempts in Imi N’Tala.

“It’s not true. It’s politics,” he said, referring to Morocco’s decision not to accept aid from countries such as the United States and France. “We have to set aside our pride. This is too much.”

On  February 6, 2023, a pair of powerful earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria, leaving destruction in their wake. The latest known death toll is 50,000; more than a lakh other people were injured in 11 provinces. At least 1.5 crore people and 40 lakh buildings were affected; some 3.45 lakh apartments were destroyed.

The earthquakes weren’t entirely unexpected given Turkey’s seismic history, but scientists were startled by their unprecedented scale.

A study published on August 3 in the journal Science unearthed the intricate union of tectonic forces that led to the disaster, advancing researchers’ understanding of these quakes, their unexpected power, and what they portend for the way scientists are trying to forecast others like them.

Geological anatomy

Scientists seek to understand how earthquakes occur and grow to devastating sizes. The earth’s crust consists of tectonic plates. Fault lines form where these plates interact, as they collide, pull apart or slide past each other. When these plates abruptly grind and slip past each other, they release pent-up pressure, leading to earthquakes.

The earthquakes in Turkey occurred along the East and North Anatolian Fault Lines, which run 700 km and 1,500 km long, respectively. And these geological behemoths, the new study found, were in constant dialogue.

“Imagine a conversation among faults, where they communicate through stress interactions,” Zhe Jia, the lead author of the new study paper and a postdoc at the University of San Diego, California, told this writer.

But during the quakes, the conversation was disrupted by something like shouting. A seismic “cascade” broke through fault bends and step-overs, which are otherwise barriers to the propagation of an earthquake.

Fault bends and step-overs are like curves and gaps in a road. For earthquakes, they are places where fault lines change direction or have a little gap. They affect how and where earthquakes happen. “These known fault lines played a significant role, but the sheer magnitude of the quakes far exceeded expectations,” Dr. Jia said.

Cascade of ruptures

The unusual interaction initiated a cascade of ruptures, resulting in a larger-than-usual total rupture length and a more tremendous potential for destruction. A testament to this is the fact that, in places where there were no buildings and/or where no people died, scientists observed craters after the earthquakes.

Dr. Jia has studied many earthquakes, but he said he was still surprised by the ‘dialogue’ between the fault lines. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, seismologist Sylvain Barbot and Istanbul’s Kandilli Observatory seismologist Sezim Guvercin said the same thing.

The first earthquake (M7.8) struck near Gaziantep on a strike-slip fault, a type of tectonic plate boundary where two plates slide horizontally past each other. The next quake (M7.7) hit near Ekinözü, roughly 200 km north. They were Turkey’s strongest in more than 2,000 years and caused substantial damage along the East Anatolian Fault, which runs through eastern Turkey, extending from near Turkey’s border with Syria to the northeastern region.

The Narlı Fault and Çardak–Sürgü Fault Zone are also primarily located in eastern Turkey. They extend from the southern part of Turkey to the northeastern part, roughly parallel to the border with Armenia. They both experienced separate earthquakes. The ground near the coast some 200 km to the southwest began to move like a liquid. The Cyprian geological survey department  recorded a minor tsunami near the island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Comparative analysis

One feature of the studies of these earthquakes is that scientists raced against the clock to gather and analyse data after the quakes, allowing them to piece together how they evolved. This is crucial to understand the associated hazards.

Researchers such as Dr. Jia received satellite data nine hours after the earthquake. While some researchers compared the 2023 quakes to historical records and GPS data to make sense of the numbers, Dr. Jia’s group also used supercomputers to run simulations using the available data and compared them to GPS data and images of the earth before and after the events.

Their work in Science was distinguished by two methods: kinematic slip inversion and fault-property modelling. Kinematic slip inversion is like rewinding an earthquake video to understand how fault surfaces moved, indicating what might have occurred underground. In fault-property modelling, researchers estimate the characteristics of the fault, like friction and material properties, to predict how an earthquake is likely to spread along it. These predictions are then compared to real earthquake data to gain insights.

“Think of it as watching for differences between two otherwise identical pictures,” Dr. Jia said.

Such measurements show researchers the surface but also something deeper. They “measured the deformation of the earth’s surface, helping us to determine the shape of faults and the subsurface slip that occurred,” Dr. Barbot, who studied the Turkey-Syria earthquakes separately, said.

Science and policy

Earthquake science extends beyond the lab and influences policy and disaster management. The lessons from Turkey’s quakes have far-reaching implications, according to experts. They were revelations of the planet’s oft-enigmatic inner workings, underscoring the unpredictable nature of seismic events. 

Then again, Turkey had been aware of the possibility of such an earthquake, Dr. Barbot said. Turkish law requires its buildings to adhere to building codes designed to prevent the sort of disaster following the events of February 6. However, these policies have reportedly not been fully enforced everywhere in Turkey for various reasons. “Unfortunately, this gamble led to a serious disaster,” Dr. Barbot said.

Shock after shock rippled through Turkey’s grounds as Dr. Guvercin’s team gathered news about people trapped under the rubble of toppled structures. “We undertook this study at times with tears and at times rebelling against the corrupt system that caused the disaster – it will remain a lament in my memory,” she added.

Vijay Shankar Balakrishnan is a freelance science journalist in Germany.

Asni:

When Khadija Temera, a survivor of Morocco’s devastating earthquake, was sent to a psychiatrist on Tuesday, she was just one of a hundred newly traumatised patients who would be seen within 24 hours.

The powerful quake last Friday killed more than 2,900 people, most of them in remote villages of the High Atlas Mountains.

Beyond the physical devastation, soldiers and aid workers say it is becoming increasing clear that many of the survivors are facing severe mental suffering.

“The most important thing is that we are alive,” Temera says, her henna-stained fingers fiddling with a piece of paper, her eyes swollen with tears.

But now she wants to “heal her heart”, and on Tuesday she had her first consultation with a psychiatrist, seeking balm for the trauma inflicted by the quake.

She had first gone to see a regular doctor for hypertension.

But Moroccan troops in the area quickly referred her to the psychiatrist, who said he had seen around a hundred patients since the previous day out of the 500 who came to the field hospital in Asni, around 90 kilometres (55 miles) south of the tourist hub of Marrakesh.

Flashbacks from the fateful day continue to haunt Temera: of stairs collapsing and trapping her and the nine members of her family before they could be rescued.

“I’ve been awake ever since, I can’t fall asleep — as soon as I lie down everything comes back,” said the 68-year-old from the village of Lareb.

– ‘Acute stress’ –

Next to her on a bench, a mute woman was also waiting for a consultation, her hands clasped across her chest and breathing heavily.

She has lost both her children.

After her comes the turn of a man in his thirties, his eyes red from crying.

Of the thousands injured in the powerful earthquake, “some were not only wounded and bruised in their flesh, they were also often ‘bereaved’, having lost their homes”, said Adil Akanour, the only psychiatrist at the makeshift hospital, which was opened to the press on Tuesday.

Meanwhile villagers in more isolated hamlets, which have remained inaccessible, told AFP of their isolation and the absence of aid.

Survivors find themselves in a “state of acute stress with symptoms, often physical at first”, Akanour said, adding that dizziness, palpitations, headaches and abdominal pain can be symptoms that “hide” a psychological problem.

According to the World Health Organization, nearly everyone who experiences such an emergency will suffer some psychological problems which, in most cases, will fade with time.

– ‘There’s nothing left’ –

The separation of families, insecurity, loss of livelihoods and disruption of social contacts are all potential psychological problems, according to the UN organisation, which recommends urgent care to prevent the development of post-traumatic stress disorders.

The 6.8-magnitude quake that struck on September 8 was the most powerful ever recorded in the kingdom, with the provisional toll of 2,900 people dead likely to rise.

Entire villages were swallowed up, and with them the lives of hundreds of modest families.

Thousands of people were left homeless, the majority now living alone in makeshift tents or, for a few such as Mouhamed El Makhconi, sheltering in genuine windproof tents provided by the interior ministry.

“I was the only one providing for my family,” the 60-year old said with a resigned, toothless smile.

He did so by selling jewellery to tourists heading to the summits of the High Atlas mountain range that dominates the landscape.

But now “there’s nothing left” of his ground-floor apartment, leaving him and his eight-member family destitute.

“I haven’t even got a dirham on me,” he sighs, sitting outside the tent. He had to be provided with everything from blankets to glasses.

Adding to his desperation are the sounds of the earthquake that remain resonant in his memory.

He too cannot sleep, saying he can still feel the tremors and the waves of fear that went through his body.

But El Makhconi has not consulted a psychiatrist, largely because he needs to sort out his diabetes first.

His grandchildren have not been examined either. They are still terrified at times and miss their toys, including the bendir, a much-loved percussion instrument.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Morocco:

The Red Cross appealed on Tuesday for more than $100 million to provide desperately needed assistance in Morocco, days after a powerful earthquake killed nearly 2,900 people.

“We are seeking 100 million Swiss francs ($112 million) to be able to deliver on the most pressing needs at this time,” Caroline Holt, global director of operations at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told reporters in Geneva.

She said the funds were needed for “health, water, sanitation and hygiene, shelter relief items and basic needs”, stressing: “We need to make sure we avoid a second wave of disaster.”

Search and rescue teams from Morocco and abroad continued on Tuesday to dig through the rubble of broken mud-brick homes, hoping for signs of life in a race against time.

Friday’s 6.8-magnitude quake was the most powerful in Morocco on record.

It was the most deadly to hit the North African country since a 1960 earthquake destroyed Agadir on the Atlantic coast, killing between 12,000 and 15,000 people.

Overall, at least 2,862 people have died and more than 2,500 have been injured in the latest tragedy, according to an official toll issued late on Monday.

Morocco has authorised rescue teams to come to its aid from Britain, Qatar, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates but has so far declined offers from several other nations, including the United States and Israel.

Holt on Tuesday defended the seemingly slow pace at which the kingdom was welcoming in more international aid.

“This is an overwhelming event… This would have overwhelmed many societies,” she stressed.

“Coordination and careful consideration at this moment in time is key,” she said. 

“(It is) extremely complex accessing these hard to reach areas the needs are still evolving.”

“So I think that the Moroccan government is taking careful steps with regard to opening up and accepting bilateral offers of support … (and is) focusing on that search and rescue window before that window, unfortunately, closes, which is certainly in the coming hours.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A military helicopter delivers aid in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Talat N’Yaaqoub, in Morocco September 12, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The epicentre of Morocco’s devastating earthquake on 8 September was in the High Atlas Mountains, about 71km south-west of Marrakesh. Moina Spooner, from The Conversation Africa, asked Jesús Galindo-Zaldivar, who has been carrying out research on the formation of the Atlas mountains and the geology of the area, about the factors which led to this situation.

Rabat, Morocco:

At least 2,862 people were killed in the strongest-ever earthquake to hit Morocco, the interior ministry said on Monday, revising an earlier toll of nearly 2,700 dead.

Another 2,562 people were injured, the ministry said, with rescue workers now facing a race against time to find survivors.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Moroccan rescuers supported by newly-arrived foreign teams on Monday faced an intensifying race against time to dig out any survivors from the rubble of mountain villages, on the third day after the country’s strongest-ever earthquake.

The 6.8-magnitude quake struck the Atlas mountains late on Friday southwest of the tourist centre of Marrakesh. It killed almost 2,500 people and injured a similar number, according to the latest official toll.

In the disaster-stricken community of Talat Nyacoub, 12 ambulances and several dozen 4X4s from the Army and police were deployed while around 100 Moroccan rescuers were searching for signs of life amid the collapsed buildings.

Nearby, AFP saw a Spanish team of 30 firefighters, a doctor, nurse and two technicians coordinating with Moroccan authorities before starting to dig, as a helicopter flew overhead.

“The big difficulty is in zones remote and difficult to access, like here, but the injured are choppered out,” Annika Coll, who heads the Spanish team, told AFP.

About 70 km north, another Spanish team from the Military Emergencies Unit (UME) had set up camp since Sunday night on the edge of Amizmiz village.

Albert Vasquez, the unit’s communications officer, said his team was awaiting a meeting with Moroccan civil defence to determine exactly where they were needed.

Time was short, and Mr. Vasquez warned that “it’s very difficult to find people alive after three days”.

A UME unit assisted after a February earthquake struck Turkey, killing tens of thousands there and in Syria. The team still found people after seven days despite the challenge, Mr. Vasquez added.

“Hope is still there,” he said.

The rescuers are assisted by four dogs and microcameras that can be fed into the rubble in an effort to detect signs of life.

For Lahcen and Habiba Barouj, the help came to late.

“We didn’t see any rescuers. We had to get our father out from the rubble ourselves,” said Habiba Barouj, her face drawn. “Our house has been swallowed up.”

An ambulance took their father, 81, to hospital with a broken leg.

The previous evening, they buried their mother who was killed in the quake.

Rabat on Sunday announced it had accepted offers to send search and rescue teams from Britain, Qatar and the UAE, as well as Spain.

“The U.K. is deploying a team of search and rescue specialists, including 60 people, four search dogs and rescue equipment, as well as a medical assessment team,” the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said in a statement late on Sunday.

The earthquake wiped out entire villages in the foothills of the Atlas mountains, where civilian rescuers and members of Morocco’s armed forces have searched for survivors and the bodies of the dead.

Many houses in remote mountain villages were built from mud bricks.

While the foreign teams begin to arrive, Moroccan authorities have erected emergency shelters. Bright yellow tents were visible along the road into Tikht, a village which has effectively ceased to exist.

Members of the government’s civil protection service carried camp beds from a military-type truck toward the tents. Non-profit groups were also in the area to assess needs.

Previously home to at least 100 families, Tikht has been reduced to a tangle of timber, chunks of masonry as well as broken plates, shoes and the occasional intricately patterned rug.

“Life is finished here,” said Mohssin Aksum, 33, who had family in the settlement, where residents and their livestock were killed. “The village is dead.”

Citizens reported to hospitals in Marrakesh and elsewhere to donate blood for the injured. Among the donors were members of Morocco’s national football team.

Other volunteers organised food and essential goods to help quake victims, after complaints that authorities were slow to respond.

“Everyone must mobilise,” said one volunteer, Mohamed Belkaid, 65. “And that includes the authorities, but they seem to be absent.”

The education ministry announced that school classes were “suspended” in the worst-hit villages of Al-Haouz province, the quake epicentre.

Some parts of Marrakesh’s historic medina and its network of alleyways saw significant damage, with mounds of rubble and crumpled buildings in the World Heritage site.

Dozens of people continued to sleep outdoors overnight in the modern quarter of Marrakesh. Some stretched out on the median strip of Mohamed VI Avenue. Others lay at the foot of their parked cars.

The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva began its session on Monday with a minute’s silence for the quake victims.

“We are part of a global collectivity: humanity,” said Gambia’s ambassador Muhammadu Kah, who proposed the tribute.

The quake was the deadliest in Morocco since a 1960 earthquake destroyed Agadir, killing 12,000-15,000 people.

A powerful earthquake of magnitude 6.8 struck central Morocco on Friday night, killing more than 2,000 people and damaging several buildings. Several videos have surfaced on the internet showing the damage and destruction caused by the late-night quake. One such video has captured the moment when earthquake tremors rattled a wedding venue in Marrakech, leaving people running for their lives. 

In the video going viral on social media, an orchestra is seen performing at a wedding when the earthquake struck. The musicians and singer can be seen abandoning the stage and fleeing through a doorway along with other wedding guests. 

”When the powerful earthquake interrupted a wedding in Marrakech, Morocco,” a video shared on X was captioned. 

Watch the video here:

When the powerful earthquake interrupted a wedding in Marrakech Morocco #morocco#moroccoearthquake#MoroccoEathquake#MoroccoQuake#Morocco_earthquakepic.twitter.com/jvEjtZJse3

— Ahmer Butt (@ahmerbutt) September 10, 2023

Several Moroccans posted other videos showing buildings reduced to rubble and dust and parts of the famous red walls that surround the old city in historic Marrakech, a UNESCO World Heritage site, damaged.

Friday’s 6.8-magnitude quake struck 72 kilometres (45 miles) southwest of the tourist hub of Marrakesh, wiping out entire villages in the hills of the Atlas mountains. The quake killed at least 2,012 people and injured 2,059 others, of whom 1,404 are in critical condition, according to the latest figures from Morocco’s interior ministry.

Many people are still believed to be under the rubble and rescue efforts are underway. The quake was the deadliest in Morocco since a 1960 earthquake destroyed Agadir and killed more than 12,000 people. 

 Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday expressed grief at the loss of lives in the earthquake and said India is ready to offer all possible assistance to it in this difficult time.

PM Modi said on X, “Extremely pained by the loss of lives due to an earthquake in Morocco. In this tragic hour, my thoughts are with the people of Morocco. Condolences to those who have lost their loved ones. May the injured recover at the earliest. India is ready to offer all possible assistance to Morocco in this difficult time.”
 

Tafeghaghte:

Hamid ben Henna had just asked his young son Marouane to fetch a knife to cut a melon for the family’s evening meal when Morocco’s earthquake hit on Friday night.

With the weekend beginning, they had been enjoying a lamb and vegetable tagine stew and Marouane had been telling his father what materials he would need for the coming school year.

“That’s when it struck,” Ben Henna said. The room began to shake, the lights went out and rubble started falling from the ceiling of their traditional house in a remote village of the High Atlas mountains.

The earthquake was Morocco’s most powerful since at least 1900 and it killed more than 2,000 people, mostly in small mountain villages like Tafeghaghte where the Ben Henna family live.

Ben Henna and his other son, Mouad, staggered out of the open door into the alleyway as their house began to collapse. They managed to free his wife Amina and small daughter Meryem. But as the dust settled they saw that Marouane had not made it.

The eight-year-old had run further into the house and was lying under a meter of rubble.

His little body was only recovered the next day, after Ben Henna’s brothers arrived by car from Casablanca, five hours away, to help lift the rubble.

Marouane, described by his father as an enthusiastic boy who loved school, was buried on Saturday morning.

The family is now not only grieving but destitute. All their belongings lie in the wreckage of their fallen house and they face a third night sleeping outside in the bitter mountain cold.

Ben Henna’s source of livelihood, the three-wheel moped he used to ferry goods around the neighbourhood for a small fee, was buried in falling debris and no longer works. The alleyway leading to the ruins of their house is covered in fallen rocks.

The family still have a donkey and a goat that survived the quake. But their animal feed was buried in a collapsed storeroom and there is little point slaughtering the animals because they cannot refrigerate the meat.

Barely a house in Tafeghaghte seems unscathed by the disaster. Of the roughly 400 villagers, nearly 80 are dead, according to survivors. Large piles of rubble dot the village. One family Ben Henna knew lost seven members.

Families have gathered under olive trees in a small field to pitch shelters where survivors can spend the night, safe from aftershocks even if their damaged homes stayed mostly erect.

Fatima Boujdig sat with her husband in the shade of their large red truck, badly damaged by falling rubble, as a donkey grazed nearby. They borrowed money to buy the truck and do not know how they can now repay it.

“We were in darkness and covered in dust. We heard the earthquake and the rocks and walls falling… now you can see the village is reduced to rubble,” she said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Tafeghaghte:

Using heavy equipment and even their bare hands, rescuers in Morocco on Sunday stepped up efforts to find survivors of a devastating earthquake that killed more than 2,100 people and flattened villages.

The first foreign rescuers flew in to help after the North African country’s strongest-ever quake killed at least 2,122 people and injured more than 2,400, many seriously, according to official figures updated late on Sunday.

Friday’s 6.8-magnitude quake struck 72 kilometres (45 miles) southwest of the tourist hub of Marrakesh, wiping out entire villages in the hills of the Atlas mountains.

On Sunday an aftershock of magnitude 4.5 rattled already-traumatised residents in the same region.

The mountain village of Tafeghaghte, 60 kilometres from Marrakesh, was almost entirely destroyed, an AFP team reported, with very few buildings still standing.

Amid the debris, civilian rescuers and members of Morocco’s armed forces searched for survivors and the bodies of the dead.

AFP saw them recover one body from the ruins of a house. Four others were still buried there, residents said.

“Everyone is gone! My heart is broken. I am inconsolable,” cried Zahra Benbrik, 62, who said she had lost 18 relatives, with only the body of her brother still trapped.

“I want them to hurry and get him out so I can mourn in peace,” she said.

Many houses in remote mountain villages were built from mud bricks.

In the village of Amizmiz, near Tafeghaghte, a backhoe dragged away the heaviest pieces of rubble before rescuers dug into the dusty debris with their bare hands to remove a body that appeared to be under a quilt.

– The crucial hours –

The two villages lie in Al-Haouz province, site of the epicentre, which suffered the most deaths, 1,351, authorities reported.

According to Moroccan public television, “more than 18,000 families have been affected” by the quake in Al-Haouz.

Citizens on Sunday rushed to hospitals in Marrakesh to donate blood to help the injured. 

Spain’s defence ministry said an A400 airlifter took off from Zaragoza with 56 rescuers and four search dogs headed for Marrakesh to “help in the search and rescue of survivors”.

“We will send whatever is needed because everyone knows that these first hours are key, especially if there are people buried under rubble,” Defence Minister Margarita Robles told Spanish public television.

Many residents of the usually bustling tourist hotspot of Marrakesh spent a second night sleeping on the streets, huddled together under blankets and among bags filled with their belongings.

One of them, Fatema Satir, said many stayed outside for fear of their houses collapsing.

“There is no help for us,” Satir said. “Our houses have been cracked, others destroyed — like my daughter’s house which was wiped out. We are in a chaotic state.”

In the city’s historic Jemaa el-Fna square, about 20 people were huddled on the ground, wrapped in blankets, while others stayed on the lawn of the nearby town hall, its 12th-century ramparts partially collapsed.

The kingdom declared three days of national mourning, and a prayer for the quake victims was to be held Sunday in all of the kingdom’s mosques.

Morocco’s interior ministry said on Saturday evening that authorities are “mobilised to speed up rescue operations and evacuate the injured.” 

In addition to Spain, several countries offered aid.

French President Emmanuel Macron said his country has mobilised “all technical and security teams to be able to intervene, when the Moroccan authorities deem it useful.”

Macron, along with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the heads of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, African Union and European Commission, also pledged,  in a joint statement, to “mobilise our technical and financial tools and assistance” to help the people of Morocco.

– Long recovery ahead –

The United States said it also had search-and-rescue teams ready to deploy, and Pope Francis on Sunday again expressed support for those affected by the disaster.

“I thank the rescuers and all those who are working to alleviate the suffering of the people,” he said from the Vatican window above St Peter’s Square.

Algeria, which has long had tense relations with neighbouring Morocco, opened its airspace, which had been closed for two years, to flights carrying humanitarian aid and evacuating the injured.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country in 2020 established ties with Morocco, offered to send search-and-rescue teams, declaring that “Israel stands by Morocco in its difficult time”.

The Red Cross warned that it could take years to repair the damage.

“It won’t be a matter of a week or two… We are counting on a response that will take months, if not years,” said Hossam Elsharkawi, its Middle East and North Africa director.

The quake was the deadliest in Morocco since a 1960 earthquake destroyed Agadir and killed more than 12,000 people.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)