Over 1000 Killed in Powerful Earthquake in Morocco
NEW DELHI, Sept 9: More than 1000 people were killed and an unspecified number of people injured in a rare and one of the deadliest earthquakes in decades that struck Morocco late on Friday night shaking and damaging buildings from villages in the Atlas Mountains to the historic city of Marrakech.
The 6.8-magnitude quake struck a mountainous area 72 kilometres southwest of tourist hotspot Marrakesh at 11:11 pm (2211 GMT) Friday, the US Geological Survey reported. The U.S. agency reported a magnitude-4.9 aftershock hit 19 minutes later.
The epicentre of Friday’s tremor was near the town of Ighil in Al Haouz Province, roughly 70 kilometres south of Marrakech. The USGS said the epicentre was 18 kilometres below the Earth’s surface, while Morocco’s seismic agency put it at 11 kilometres down.
Officials said on Saturday that strong tremors were also felt in the coastal cities of Rabat, Casablanca and Essaouira and had caused widespread damage and send terrified residents and tourists scrambling to safety in the middle of the night.
The toll may rise further up as rescuers struggled to reach the remote areas hit hardest. People woken by the quake ran into the streets in terror and disbelief. State television showed people clustered in the streets of Marrakech late at night, afraid to go back inside buildings that might still be unstable.
A man said he was visiting a nearby apartment when dishes and wall hangings began raining down, and people were knocked off their feet and chairs. A woman described fleeing her house after an “intense vibration.” A man holding a child said he was jarred awake in bed by the shaking.
Emergency workers looked for survivors in the rubble of buildings, their reflective yellow vests glowing in the dark. A hole gaped in the side of a home, and a car was nearly buried by the chunks of a collapsed building in other images broadcast by local media.
In Marrakech, the famous Koutoubia Mosque, built in the 12th century, suffered damage, but the extent was not immediately clear. Its 69-metre minaret is known as the “roof of Marrakech.” Moroccans also posted videos showing damage to parts of the famous red walls that surround the old city, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The majority of the people killed were in Marrakech and five provinces near the quake’s epicentre and another 672 people were injured, Morocco’s Interior Ministry reported Saturday morning. Of the injured, the ministry wrote, 205 were seriously hurt. The head of a town near the earthquake’s epicentre said several homes in nearby towns had partly or totally collapsed, and electricity and roads were cut off in some places.
The Moroccan military and emergency services mobilised aid efforts to the areas hit by damages, but roads leading to the mountain region around the epicentre were jammed with vehicles and blocked with collapsed rocks, slowing rescue efforts. Trucks loaded with blankets, camp cots and lighting equipment were trying to reach the hard-hit areas, the officials said.
Later Saturday morning in Marrakech, ambulances and motorcycles whirred by the edge of the old city, where business as usual mostly resumed Saturday morning. Tourists and passers-by navigated roadblocks and snapped photos of sections of the clay ochre wall that had cracked, spilling fragments and dust onto the sidewalk and street.
World leaders offered to send in aid or rescue crews as condolences poured in from countries around Europe, a Group of 20 summit in India, countries around Europe, the Mideast and beyond. Turkiye’s president, whose country lost tens of thousands of people in a massive earthquake earlier this year, was among those proposing assistance. France and Germany, with large populations of people with Moroccan origins, also offered to help. And the leaders of both Ukraine and Russia expressed support for Moroccans.
The Moroccan government, however, has not formally asked for help, a step required in order for outside rescue crews to be brought in.
In 1960, a magnitude 6.7 quake near the Moroccan city of Agadir killed more than 12,000. The Agadir quake prompted changes in construction rules in Morocco, but many buildings, especially rural homes, are not built to withstand such tremors.
In 2004, at least 628 people were killed and 926 injured when a quake hit Al Hoceima in north-eastern Morocco, and The 7.3-magnitude El Asnam earthquake in neighbouring Algeria in 1980 killed 2,500 people and left at least 300,000 homeless. Friday’s quake was felt as far away as Portugal and Algeria, according to the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere and Algeria’s Civil Defence agency, which oversees emergency response.
(Manas Dasgupta)
