2023-09-10 05:04:00
Morocco mourns its dead on Sunday after the violent earthquake which devastated a large part of the country and in which more than 2,000 people died, according to the latest official report likely to worsen with further research.
Saturday’s earthquake, magnitude 7 according to the Moroccan Center for Scientific and Technical Research (6.8 according to the American Seismological Service), is the most powerful to have ever been measured in Morocco. It left at least 2,012 dead and 2,059 injured, of whom 1,404 are in very serious condition, the Interior Ministry announced on Saturday evening.
The province of Al-Haouz, where the epicenter of the earthquake was located, is the most bereaved with 1,293 deaths, followed by the province of Taroudant with 452 deaths. In these two areas located southwest of the tourist city of Marrakech, entire villages were wiped out by the earthquake.
“I lost everything,” laments Lahcen, a resident of the village of Moulay Brahim in the High Atlas, whose wife and four children were killed. “I can’t do anything about it now, I just want to get away from the world, to mourn,” he continues, prostrate in a corner.
First burials
On the heights of this village of some 3,000 inhabitants, Bouchra dries her tears with her scarf as she watches men dig graves to bury the deceased.
“My cousin’s grandchildren are dead,” she said, before adding in a choked voice: “I saw the devastation of the earthquake live, I’m still trembling. It’s like a ball of fire that swallowed up everything in its path.
“Everyone here has lost family, whether in our village or elsewhere in the region,” she continues.
The royal cabinet declared a three-day national mourning, and world leaders expressed shock and condolences.
Several countries, including Israel, France, Spain, Italy and the United States, have offered help. Even neighboring Algeria, with stormy relations with Morocco, has opened its airspace, closed for two years, to flights transporting humanitarian aid and the wounded.
“Years” of help
According to the International Red Cross, Morocco’s aid needs are immense.
“It will not be a matter of a week or two (…) We are counting on months, even years of response,” warned Hossam Elsharkawi, director for the Middle East and North Africa, in a press release. of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The village of Tafeghaghte, 60 km southwest of Marrakech, was almost completely destroyed by the earthquake, the epicenter of which was only around fifty kilometers away, according to an AFP team. Few of the buildings are still standing.
“Three of my grandchildren (12, 8 and 4 years old) and their mother are dead, they are still under the debris, not so long ago we were playing together,” laments Omar Benhanna, 72 years old.
On Saturday, many residents went to the cemetery to bury some 70 remains. The funeral rites were punctuated by screams and tears.
In the evening, television channels broadcast aerial images showing entire villages with clay houses in the Al-Haouz region completely pulverized.
“Public authorities are still mobilized to speed up rescue and evacuation operations for the injured,” the Interior Ministry said on Saturday evening.
In addition to Marrakech, the shock was felt in Rabat, Casablanca, Agadir and Essaouira, where many panicked residents took to the streets in the middle of the night, fearing the collapse of their homes.
This earthquake is the deadliest in Morocco since the one that destroyed Agadir, on the west coast of the country, on February 29, 1960. Nearly 15,000 people, or a third of the city’s population, died.
10/09/2023 05:03:24 – Tafeghaghte (Morocco) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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