Rescuers raced against time on Monday to find survivors in the rubble more than 48 hours after Morocco's deadliest earthquake in more than six decades, with almost 2,700 killed in a disaster that devastated villages in the High Atlas Mountains.
Search teams from Spain, Britain and Qatar are joining efforts to find survivors of the 6.8-magnitude quake that struck late on Friday night 72 kilometres southwest of Marrakech.
Many survivors spent a third night outside, their homes destroyed or rendered unsafe. The death toll has climbed to 2,681 with 2,501 people injured, the state news agency reported on Monday.
Footage from the remote village of Imi N'Tala, filmed by Spanish rescuer Antonio Nogales of the aid group Bomberos Unidos Sin Fronteras (United Firefighters Without Borders), showed men and dogs clambering over steep slopes covered in rubble.
"The level of destruction is ... absolute," said Nogales, struggling to find the right word to describe what he was seeing.
"Not a single house has stayed upright. We're going to start our search with dogs and see whether we can find anyone alive."
In Imgdal, a village about 75 km south of Marrakech, women and children huddled early on Monday morning under makeshift tents set up along the road and next to damaged buildings. Further south, a car stood crushed by boulders that had fallen from the cliff.
In the village of Tafeghaghte, Hamid ben Henna described how his eight-year-old son died under wreckage after he had gone to fetch a knife from the kitchen to cut a melon as the family were having their evening meal. The rest of the family survived.
MUD BRICK HOUSES CRUMBLED
With much of the quake zone in hard-to-reach areas, the authorities have not issued any estimates for the number of people missing.
Roads blocked or obstructed by rocks have made it harder to access the worst-hit locations.
On a way to the town of Adassil, not far from the epicentre, rescue worker Ayman Koait was trying to clear rockfalls that were blocking traffic.
"There are worse roads further up that are still blocked and we're trying to open them too," he said, as vans loaded with aid squeezed along a narrow cleared track.
Many structures crumbled easily, including ubiquitous, traditional mud brick, stone and rough wood houses, one of the picturesque features that have made the High Atlas a magnet for tourists.
"It's difficult to pull people out alive because most of the walls and ceilings turned to earthen rubble when they fell, burying whoever was inside without leaving air space," said a military worker, asking not to be named because of army rules.
The harm done to Morocco's cultural heritage has been emerging gradually. Buildings in Marrakech old city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were damaged. The quake also did major damage to the historically significant 12th-century Tinmel Mosque in a remote mountain area closer to the epicentre.
It was the North African country's deadliest earthquake since 1960, when a tremor was estimated to have killed at least 12,000 people, and the most powerful since at least 1900, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Hospital head Col. Youssef Qamouss told CNN he has 24 doctors and 48 nurses on site, but added the staff and its capacity — that currently stands at 30 beds — can be expanded.
Qamouss and his team are used to working in disaster zones. They’ve been deployed to Jordan and the Ivory Coast in the past, helping with crises there.
“We start with a triage to determine the needs of the patients, then send them to specialists,” he said.
The hospital is formed of 16 large tents arranged in a horse shoe formation, each with a department sign. There is urgent care, ophthalmology, surgical tent, pediatrics and even a radiology department.
“(The) most common injuries are burns, fractures, cuts, injuries to the face,” Qamouss said.
LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL AID
Survivors struggling to find shelter and supplies have described the government response as slow, though it appeared to be speeding up on Monday.
In a televised statement on Sunday, government spokesperson Mustapha Baytas said every effort was being made on the ground.
The army said it was reinforcing search-and-rescue teams, providing drinking water and distributing food, tents and blankets.
Neither King Mohammed VI nor Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch have addressed the nation since the disaster.
Morocco had accepted offers of aid from Spain and Britain, which both sent search-and-rescue specialists with sniffer dogs, from the United Arab Emirates, and from Qatar, which said on Sunday a search-and-rescue team was on its way.
State TV said the government had assessed needs and considered the importance of coordinating relief efforts before accepting help, and that it might accept relief offers from other countries later.
Morocco’s decision to forgo German aid is not political: Foreign ministry
Both France and Germany played down the significance of Morocco not immediately taking them up on their offers of aid.
Germany said on Monday it saw no indication that the decision was political, while France said on Sunday it stood ready to help whenever Morocco made a formal request and any controversy on the issue was "misplaced".
Paris and Rabat have had a difficult relationship in recent years notably over the issue of Western Sahara, a disputed territory that Morocco wants France to recognise as Moroccan. Morocco has not had an ambassador in Paris since January.
As Germany learned from deadly flooding in 2021 in the Ahr valley, aid coordination is important during major disasters to ensure rescue workers do not impede each other, said the spokesperson.
"I'm sure that they (Morocco) have thought very carefully about which forces can be deployed where and how they can get there, what transport capacities are available, for example," the spokesperson added.
Morocco's King Mohammed VI on Sunday thanked Spain, Qatar, the UK and the United Arab Emirates for sending aid after the country's deadliest earthquake in over six decades, state TV reported. Morocco had assessed aid needs and considered the importance of coordinating relief efforts before accepting their help, it added.
Morocco’s mud brick housing makes hunt for earthquake survivors harder
Rescuers digging through the rubble after Morocco’s deadly earthquake have warned that the traditional mud brick, stone and rough wood housing ubiquitous in the High Atlas mountains reduced the chances of finding survivors.
“It’s difficult to pull people out alive because most of the walls and ceilings turned to earthen rubble when they fell, burying whoever was inside without leaving air spaces,” a military rescue worker, asking not to be named because of army rules against speaking to media, said at an army centre south of the historic city of Marrakech not far from the quake epicentre.
The traditional homes, sometimes hundreds of years old, sometimes built more recently, have long been a popular sight for tourists travelling to the mountain from Marrakech.
They are often built by the families themselves to a traditional pattern, without any architect’s help and with extensions added when they can.
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