AMIZMIZ, Morocco: An aftershock rattled Moroccans on Sunday as they mourned victims of the nation’s strongest earthquake in more than a century and toiled to rescue survivors while soldiers and aid workers raced to reach desperate mountain villages in ruins. The disaster killed more than 2,100 people — a number that is expected to rise.
The United Nations estimated that 300,000 people were affected by Friday night’s magnitude 6.8 quake and some Moroccans complained on social networks that the government wasn’t allowing more help from outside. International aid crews were prepared to deploy, but some grew frustrated waiting for the government to officially request their assistance.
“We know there is a great urgency to save people and dig under the remains of buildings,” said Arnaud Fraisse, founder of Rescuers Without Borders, who had a team stuck in Paris waiting for the green light. “There are people dying under the rubble, and we cannot do anything to save them.”
Help was slow to arrive in Amizmiz, where a whole chunk of the town of orange and red sandstone brick homes carved into a mountainside appeared to be missing. A mosque’s minaret had collapsed.
“It’s a catastrophe,’’ said villager Salah Ancheu, 28. “We don’t know what the future is. The aid remains insufficient.”
Residents swept the rubble off the main unpaved road into town and people cheered when trucks full of soldiers arrived. But they pleaded for more help.
“There aren’t ambulances, there aren’t police, at least for right now,” Ancheu said.
Those left homeless — or fearing more aftershocks — slept outside Saturday, in the streets of the ancient city of Marrakech or under makeshift canopies in Atlas Mountain towns like Moulay Brahim, among the hardest-hit. The worst destruction was in small, rural communities that are hard for rescuers to reach because the roads that snake up the mountainous terrain were covered by fallen rocks.
Those areas were shaken anew Sunday by a magnitude 3.9 aftershock, according to the US Geological Survey. It wasn’t immediately clear if it caused more damage or casualties, but it was likely strong enough to rattle nerves in areas where damage has left buildings unstable and residents feared aftershocks.
Friday’s earthquake toppled buildings not strong enough to withstand such a mighty temblor, trapping people in the rubble and sending others fleeing in terror. A total of 2,012 people were confirmed dead and at least 2,059 more people were injured — 1,404 of them critically, the Interior Ministry reported Saturday.
Flags were lowered across Morocco, as King Mohammed VI ordered three days of national mourning starting Sunday. The army mobilized specialized search and rescue teams, and the king ordered water, food rations and shelters to be provided to those who lost their homes.
He also called for mosques to hold prayers Sunday for the victims, many of whom were buried Saturday amid the frenzy of rescue work nearby.
But Morocco has not made an international appeal for help like Turkiye did in the hours following a massive quake earlier this year, according to aid groups.
Aid offers poured in from around the world and the UN said it had a team in Morocco coordinating international support. About 100 teams made up of a total of 3,500 rescuers are registered with a UN platform and ready to deploy in Morocco when asked, Rescuers Without Borders said. Germany had a team of more than 50 rescuers waiting near Cologne-Bonn Airport but sent them home, news agency dpa reported.
In a sign Morocco may be prepared to accept more assistance, a Spanish search and rescue team arrived in Marrakech and was headed to the rural Talat N’Yaaqoub, according to Spain’s Emergency Military Unit. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said in a radio interview that Moroccan authorities asked for help. Another rescue team from Nice, France, also was on its way.
In France, which has many ties to Morocco and said four of its citizens died in the quake, towns and cities have offered more than 2 million euros ($2.1 million) in aid. Popular performers are collecting donations.
The epicenter of Friday’s quake was near the town of Ighil in Al Haouz Province, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of Marrakech. The region is known for scenic villages and valleys tucked in the High Atlas Mountains.
Devastation gripped each town along the High Atlas’ steep and winding switchbacks, with homes folding in on themselves and people crying as boys and helmet-clad police carried the dead through the streets.
”I was asleep when the earthquake struck. I could not escape because the roof fell on me. I was trapped. I was saved by my neighbors who cleared the rubble with their bare hands,” said Fatna Bechar in Moulay Brahim. “Now, I am living with them in their house because mine was completely destroyed.”
There was little time for mourning as survivors tried to salvage anything from damaged homes.
Khadija Fairouje’s face was puffy from crying as she joined relatives and neighbors hauling possessions down rock-strewn streets. She had lost her daughter and three grandsons aged 4 to 11 when their home collapsed while they were sleeping less than 48 hours earlier.
“Nothing’s left. Everything fell,” said her sister, Hafida Fairouje.
Rescuers backed by soldiers and police searched for victims in collapsed homes in the remote town of Adassil, near the epicenter. Military vehicles brought in bulldozers and other equipment to clear roads of rocks that crumbled off mountainsides, the state news agency MAP reported. Ambulances took dozens of wounded from the village of Tikht, population 800, to Mohammed VI University Hospital in Marrakech.
In Marrakech, where authorities were assessing the damage, large chunks were missing from a crenelated roof, and warped metal, crumbled concrete and dust were all that remained of a building cordoned off by police tape.
Tourists and residents lined up to donate desperately needed blood. Jalila Guerina said she ran to help when she learned of the need because of her duty as a Moroccan citizen.
“I did not even think about it twice,” she told The Associated Press, “especially in the conditions where people are dying, especially at this moment when they are needing help, any help.”
In the market, stray cats clambered over piles of stones and wooden bars, but shoppers were scarce at stalls set up under parasols by food and souvenir vendors.
The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 when it hit at 11:11 p.m., lasting several seconds, the USGS said. A magnitude 4.9 aftershock hit 19 minutes later, it said. The collision of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates occurred at a relatively shallow depth, which makes a quake more dangerous.
It was the strongest earthquake to hit the North African country in more than 120 years, according to the USGS, which has records dating to 1900, but it was not the deadliest. In 1960, a magnitude 5.8 temblor struck near the Moroccan city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000. That quake prompted Morocco to change construction rules, but many buildings, especially rural homes, are not built to withstand such tremors.
In 2004, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake near the Mediterranean coastal city of Al Hoceima left more than 600 dead.
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 Defense agency.
Aftershock rattles Morocco as rescuers seek survivors from the earthquake that killed over 2,100
https://arab.news/8xhue
Aftershock rattles Morocco as rescuers seek survivors from the earthquake that killed over 2,100
- The United Nations estimated that 300,000 people were affected by Friday night’s magnitude 6.8 quake
- Some Moroccans complained on social networks that the government wasn’t allowing more help from outside
Sudan’s war puts charity kitchen workers feeding displaced families at risk
- The real number of workers killed is likely far higher than the estimated 100, he says, but the war has prevented reliable data collection and record-keeping
CAIRO: Enas Arbab fled Sudan’s western region of Darfur after her hometown fell to Sudanese paramilitary forces, taking only her year-old son with her and the memory of her father, who was killed, she said, simply for working at a charity kitchen serving people displaced by the fighting.
The Rapid Support Forces — or RSF, a paramilitary group that has been at war with the Sudanese army since April 2023 — had laid siege on el-Fasher in the western Darfur region, starving people out before it overran the city.
UN officials say several thousand civilians were killed in the RSF takeover of el-Fasher last October. Only 40 percent of the city’s 260,000 residents managed to flee the onslaught, thousands of whom were wounded, the officials said. The fate of the rest remains unknown.
During the fighting, Arbab says RSF fighters took her father, Mohamed ِArbab, from their home after beating him in front of the family, and demanded a ransom. When the family couldn’t pay, they told them they had killed him, she says. To this day, the family doesn’t know where his body is.
When her husband disappeared a month later, Enas Arbab decided to flee north, to Egypt. “We couldn’t stay in el-Fasher,” she said. “It was no longer safe and there was no food or water.”
Her father was one of more than 100 charity kitchen workers who have been killed since the war began, according to workers who spoke with The Associated Press and the Aid Workers Security database, a group that tracks major incidents around the world impacting aid workers.
In areas of intense fighting — especially in Darfur — famine is spreading and food and basic supplies are scarce. The community-led public kitchens have become a lifeline but many working there have been abducted, robbed, arrested, beaten or killed.
Grim numbers in a brutal war
Volunteer Salah Semsaya with the Emergency Response Rooms — a group that emerged as a local initiative and now operates in 13 provinces across Sudan, with 26,000 volunteers — acknowledges the dangers faced by workers in charity kitchens.
The real number of workers killed is likely far higher than the estimated 100, he says, but the war has prevented reliable data collection and record-keeping.
Semsaya shared records showing that 57 percent of the documented killings of charity kitchen workers occurred in Khartoum, mainly while the Sudanese capital was under RSF control, before the army retook it last March. At least 21 percent of the killings were in Darfur.
More than 50 of those killed in Khartoum worked with his group, Semsaya said.
Sudan’s war erupted after tensions between the army and the RSF escalated into fighting that began in Khartoum and spread nationwide, killing thousands and triggering mass displacement, disease outbreaks and severe food insecurity. Aid workers were frequently targeted.
Dan Teng’o, communications chief at the UN office for humanitarian affairs, says it’s unclear whether charity kitchen workers are targeted because of their work or because of their perceived affiliation with one side or other in the war.
The kitchen workers are prominent in their communities because of the work they do, making them obvious targets, activists say. Ransom demands typically range from $2,000 to $5,000, often rising once families make initial payments.
“A clear deterioration in the security context ... has significantly affected local communities, including volunteers supporting community kitchens,” Teng’o said.
Kitchen workers face risks
Farouk Abkar, a 60-year-old from el-Fasher, spent a year handing out sacks of grain at a charity kitchen in Zamzam camp, just 15 kilometers (9 miles) south of the city. He survived drone strikes and remembers the day RSF fighters attacked his kitchen. One of them punched him in the face, knocking some of his teeth out.
Abkar said he fled el-Fasher at night with his daughter, walking for 10 days. Along the way, some RSF fighters fired birdshot, which hit him in the head, leaving a chronic headache.
Now in Egypt, he shares an apartment with at least 10 other Sudanese refugees and can’t afford medical care. The harrowing images from his hometown still haunt him.
“Many things happened in el-Fasher,” he said. “There was death. There was starvation.”
Mustafa Khater, a 28-year-old charity kitchen worker, fled with his pregnant wife to Egypt a few days before el-Fasher fell to the RSF.
During the 18-month siege, some el-Fasher residents collaborated with the RSF, telling the paramilitary fighters who the kitchen workers were, Khater said. Many disappeared.
“They would take you to an area where there is a dry riverbed and kill you there,” Khater said.
A volunteer working with Semsaya’s aid group in Darfur said some of his colleagues were beaten, arrested and interrogated, with their attackers accusing them of receiving “illicit funds” for the kitchen. The volunteer spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Despite the challenges, many charity kitchens remain the only reliable food source in areas gripped by conflict and a place people can come to and give each other support, Semsaya said.
Struggling to feed thousands
The town of Khazan Jedid in East Darfur province has three charity kitchens feeding about 5,000 people daily, said Haroun Abdelrahman, a spokesperson for the Emergency Response Rooms’ branch in the area.
Abdelrahman says he was once interrogated by RSF fighters, while several of his colleagues have been robbed at knifepoint. Despite the fear and harassment, many kitchen workers are still volunteering and working, he said.
In Kassala in eastern Sudan, military agents questioned a volunteer with the branch there and his colleagues in January 2024, he said, after their kitchen started serving food and providing shelter to people who escaped nearby Wad Madani when RSF seized that town. He also spoke anonymously for fear of reprisals.
Khater, the 28-year-old who fled el-Fasher, said he heard from friends back home that after the RSF takeover, all charity kitchens in the city closed and his colleagues were either “killed or fled.”
Teng’o says the closures in areas of fighting have left “vulnerable households with no viable alternatives” and forced people to shop at local “markets where food prices are unaffordable.”
Arbab, the pregnant 19-year-old who fled with her baby boy, had hoped to rebuild her life in Egypt, her friends and a humanitarian worker said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk about the young mother.
But while on the road to the northern city of Alexandria last month, she and her son were stopped by Egyptian authorities and deported back to Sudan.
