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.)

Washington:

A strong 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck southwest of Marrakesh, Morocco late Friday, according to the US Geological Survey, causing substantial shaking.

The quake hit 44 miles (71 kilometers) southwest of Marrakesh at a depth of 18.5 kilometers at 11:11 pm (2211 GMT).

It sent debris flying into narrow alleyways and items tumbling off shelves, according to video posted on social media.

USGS’s PAGER system, which provides preliminary assessments on the impact of earthquakes, issued an orange alert for economic losses, estimating significant damage is likely, and a yellow alert for shaking-related fatalities, indicating some casualties are possible.

USGS said that “the population in this region lives in structures that are highly vulnerable to earthquake shaking.”

Morocco experiences frequent earthquakes in its northern region due to its position between the African and Eurasian plates.

In 2004, at least 628 people were killed and 926 injured when a quake hit Al Hoceima in northeastern Morocco.

The 1980, the 7.3-magnitude El Asnam earthquake in neighboring Algeria was one of the largest and most destructive earthquakes in recent history. It killed 2,500 people and left at least 300,000 homeless.

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