Earthquake in MoroccoMorocco Races to Dig Out Survivors After Strongest Quake in 100 Years
Some of the hardest-hit areas were in the Atlas Mountains, where power and phone service were knocked out and roads blocked by debris. At least 2,100 people were killed.
Family members searching for missing relatives in Douar Tnirt, Morocco, on Sunday.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
With debris and fallen rock blocking roads to Moroccan villages hit hardest by an earthquake, many residents began burying their dead and foraging for scarce supplies on Sunday as they waited for government aid.
That wait may be lengthy.
The most powerful quake to hit the region in a century spared neither city apartment dwellers nor those living in the mud-brick homes of the High Atlas Mountains, but many in the remote and rugged areas of Morocco have been left almost entirely to fend for themselves.
Survivors, faced with widespread electricity and telephone blackouts, said they were running low on food and water. Some bodies were being buried before they could be washed as Muslim rituals require.
The Friday night quake, whose magnitude has been put at 6.8, killed more than 2,100 people and injured more than 2,400, Moroccan state television reported on Sunday.
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Rubble on damaged vehicles in the old medina of Marrakesh, Morocco, on Sunday.Credit...Nariman El-Mofty for The New York Times
In one devastated town in southern Morocco, Amizmiz, a woman’s cry suddenly pierced the air. She had just learned after rushing to the town that her two brothers were dead, explained her nephew, Lacher Anflouss, 37.
“A lot of people are reacting quietly at first because they still haven’t processed it,” Mr. Anflouss said. “And then when they finally process it …” His voice trailed off.
The Moroccan state media released footage of helicopters airlifting aid to remote areas, and King Mohammed VI said he had ordered the government to provide shelter rapidly and rebuild houses for those in distress, “particularly orphans and the vulnerable.”
But the government has been generally tight-lipped since the earthquake struck, releasing little information about rescue efforts and providing only infrequent updates on casualties, and some Moroccans took to social media to criticize the response as slow and uncoordinated.
In the Atlas Mountains village of Douar Tnirt on Sunday, people sleeping outside for the third night lined up for desperately needed aid, including blankets, diapers and water. But the supplies came not from the government, which villagers said had not offered any assistance since the disaster, but from a charity in Marrakesh.
Abdessamad Ait Ihia, 17, who grew up nearby, rushed back to the area on Saturday from Casablanca, where he works, to check on his family. He had seen no sign of government rescue or relief workers, he said.
“We just want aid and people to help us, that’s all we want,” he said.
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Residents readying aid for the village of Douar Tnirt in the Atlas Mountains on Sunday.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
About 20 miles away in another mountain village, Azgour, both power and phone service had been knocked out, so it was not possible even to call for outside help. Young men following screams in the dark pulled people out of the rubble themselves with their bare hands, all the while fearing further collapse.
“We didn’t wait for anybody to start saving people’s lives,” said the village’s imam, Abdeljalil Lamghrari, 33.
With water-pumping mechanisms broken by the earthquake, villagers there were forced to venture miles away to find working wells, and desperation was growing.
Still, the head of a village association, Jamal Elabrki, 54, made an attempt at optimism.
“Rain is forecast for this week,” he said. “Without it, we’re afraid. It’s going to be really bad.”
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A woman donating blood in Marrakesh on Sunday.Credit...Nariman El-Mofty for The New York Times
Dozens of countries have offered assistance. Spain said it was sending search-and rescue teams, and the Qatari state media reported that Qatar would deploy specialized vehicles and equipment. But on Sunday, some governments and aid groups said they were still waiting for Morocco to give the green light, even as rural hospitals were overwhelmed.
Arnaud Fraisse, the founder of Secouristes Sans Frontières, a group that assisted with rescues after the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in February, said in an interview on France Inter radio that Morocco had not given his organization permission to help.
President Emmanuel Macron of France said his government was in touch with the Moroccan authorities and stood ready to assist. “The moment, the second they ask, we will deploy,” he said on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in India.
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A temporary shelter in the mountain village of Azgour, Morocco, on Sunday.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Samia Errazzouki, a Moroccan American historian of North Africa at Stanford University, said in an interview that the government’s “heavily controlled and centralized” functions were impeding its disaster response. “The immediate hours of any natural disaster are the most crucial,” she said, yet long hours passed before the king made a public statement.
“How many lives could have been saved?” Ms. Errazzouki asked.
The first three days after an earthquake are sometimes called the “golden period” for rescuers, so this is a critical time for emergency workers trying to rescue survivors in Morocco, said Caroline Holt, a director at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
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A destroyed house in Azgour on Sunday. “We didn’t wait for anybody to start saving people’s lives,” the village’s imam said.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
But she also stressed the need to provide people with clean water and to identify damaged buildings that still pose a danger. “We need to make sure we don’t have a disaster within a disaster,” she said in a statement.
As night fell on Sunday, families whose houses had been destroyed or were unsafe prepared to sleep behind makeshift shelters of colorful fabric and plastic tarps held down by rocks or in yellow tents provided by firefighters. Others concerned about aftershocks slept out in the open.
In villages like Azgour, which lies between two ridges of the Atlas Mountains south of Marrakesh, homes are commonly built of mud bricks, a traditional construction method that leaves them highly vulnerable to earthquakes and heavy rains. The quake reduced half the homes in Azgour to rubble and left the remaining ones uninhabitable.
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Destroyed buildings in the village of Amizmiz on Sunday.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
More than 300,000 civilians in Marrakesh and its outskirts were also affected by the quake, according to a report from the World Health Organization. Seventeen people died in the Marrakesh area, Morocco’s Interior Ministry said Sunday. But Marrakesh and its walled Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage site, appeared to have been spared heavy damage.
Some Moroccans greeted the government’s anemic response to the disaster with resignation. Memories are still fresh of a 2004 earthquake that was one of the most devastating in recent years: Then the prime minister did not visit the hardest-hit areas immediately because protocol dictated that he not appear before the king did.
Not that the country has a high tolerance for public outrage. Moroccan law criminalizes criticism of the king, which may help explain Moroccans’ muted response.
On Sunday, it was clear that villages across the Atlas Mountains — even ones just an hour or two from Marrakesh, a major city — were getting little or no official help. Ambulances were a rare sight, with most injured people who had been pulled from the wreckage driven to Marrakesh hospitals by private car or motorcycle, if they made it at all.
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The village of Douar Tnirt on Sunday.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Jenny Gross reported from London. Anushka Patil contributed reporting from New York.
Men dig the rubble searching for missing family members in the Douar Tnirt village.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
The doorbell rang over and over, but the house was gone. Like almost every building in Douar Tnirt, a village high up in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, the home was a rubble of broken mud bricks, its broken doorbell insisting in vain that, even after a powerful earthquake, it was still a place where humans could live.
At first, the villagers had hoped to find survivors underneath the rubble of their houses. Right after the quake struck on Friday, they started search and rescue with their bare, untrained hands, eventually adding shovels and picks.
By Sunday, the government had sent neither emergency responders nor aid to Douar Tnirt and several other mountain villages visited by journalists for The New York Times. The villagers were on their own, stuck at the end of winding, narrow mountain passes, at the mercy of the monumental landscape where they lived.
“That night, everyone was screaming,” said Zahra Id al-Houcine, who was watching a few of her male neighbors sifting through the debris of her collapsed house in search of her relatives on Sunday afternoon. “We heard screams until we stopped hearing anything.”
The list of loved ones Ms. Id al-Houcine knows she lost in the earthquake is unbearably long: her late husband’s son, the son’s wife and three of their children, including a baby, all of whom had lived with her. Then there are those she knew must have died, even if she had not yet seen their bodies: A 5-year-old and the two children of her husband’s brother.
When the house started shaking, Ms. Id al-Houcine had just gotten into bed and was about to put on the late-night radio program she started listening to earlier this year to keep herself company after her husband died, one in which Moroccans discussed their problems and their life stories. Then the ceiling fell on her “like an elevator,” she said.
The only thing that kept her from dying, too, was her mattress, which the force of the collapsing house folded on top of her as it came down. She screamed for help, her mouth filling with dust, until men pulled her out.
Now she sat alternately on a pile of rocks and a cushion someone had found somewhere, surrounded by the wreckage of her home: chunks of concrete, bamboo rods used for roofing splayed everywhere, a twisted refrigerator, a satellite dish plopped on top of it all. Somewhere down there were the other children. She had not heard them scream.
A few amateur rescuers from the neighborhood stood atop the heap, throwing down clothes or other salvageable items as they found them. Did anyone have masks, they asked? The smell of the corpses was getting to them.
Throughout Douar Tnirt, rescuers said, the bodies of the dead were emerging in such terrible condition that relatives were rushing to bury them without washing them — skipping an essential part of the Muslim funerary ritual — or having a prayer said. In some cases, they did not even dig holes, simply throwing earth over the dead in an effort to restore their dignity as quickly as possible.
“They don’t want to see them, and, well, it’s about respect for the dead,” Ms. Id al-Houcine said.
Some had been rescued alive, including several pulled out on Saturday, but left to wait so long for transportation to Marrakesh hospitals that they died before someone could load them into their car or onto their motorcycle, residents said. Ambulances were nowhere to be seen.
“If you make it, you make it,” said Abdessamad Ait Ihia, 17, one of the volunteer diggers. “If you don’t, you don’t.”
Shake intensity
Severe
Very strong
Strong
Moderate
Light
Casablanca
MOROCCO
Safi
Marrakesh
High Atlas Mountains
Essaouira
Atlantic Ocean
Epicenter
Agadir
ALGERIA
MOROCCO
Detail area
75 miles
Shake intensity
Severe
Very strong
Strong
Moderate
Light
Casablanca
Safi
MOROCCO
Essaouira
Marrakesh
Epicenter
Agadir
ALGERIA
MOROCCO
75 miles
Detail area
Shake intensity
Severe
Very strong
Strong
Moderate
Light
Casablanca
Safi
MOROCCO
High Atlas Mountains
Marrakesh
Essaouira
Epicenter
Agadir
Atlantic Ocean
ALGERIA
MOROCCO
Detail area
75 miles
Sept. 10, 2023, 6:00 p.m. ET
Axel Boada and Brent McDonald
Rescuers across central Morocco searched through rubble for survivors of the devastating earthquake. In the mountain town of Ouirgane, a rescue crew found what was thought to be a dead body and carried it away, prompting a distraught woman to follow close behind.
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CreditCredit...Reuters
Sept. 10, 2023, 5:36 p.m. ET
Axel Boada and Brent McDonald
In Moulay Brahim, a hard-hit village in the Atlas Mountains, one resident, Yassin Noumghar, said that the earthquake struck while he and his family were eating dinner and that it had rendered their home unlivable, forcing them to sleep outdoors for the past two nights.
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‘We Lost Everything’: Moroccan Man’s House Damaged by Quake
Yassin Noumghar, a resident of a village near the epicenter of the earthquake in Morocco, said that his family and neighbors were struggling without access to shelter, food or water in the aftermath of the disaster.
Be careful. We are sleeping, like, two days outside. And as you see, our family and our colleagues, our neighborhoods, everything is very difficult for us. No food, no water. We lost, also, electricity. It was very catastrophic, and we feel very bad.
Yassin Noumghar, a resident of a village near the epicenter of the earthquake in Morocco, said that his family and neighbors were struggling without access to shelter, food or water in the aftermath of the disaster.CreditCredit...Reuters
The pool at a hotel in Marrakesh on Sunday.Credit...Nariman El-Mofty for The New York Times
After a 6.8-magnitudeearthquake struck on Friday, toppling buildings and forcing some Moroccans to sleep outside and line up for desperately needed aid, tourists were resuming guided tours on Sunday and lining up outside destinations like the Bahia Palace in Marrakesh.
Nayana Wade, a visitor from Sydney, Australia, has been in Morocco for two weeks and arrived in Marrakesh on Saturday morning. Life seemed nearly normal, she said: People were walking the streets and frequenting the shops in the Medina, an ancient area of the city with narrow, walled streets and cobblestones.
The quake has not halted Ms. Wade’s trip — she and her husband planned to visit the city’s main square, Jemaa El Fna, for dinner on Sunday — but it has made them more cautious. She said they probably wouldn’t venture into the Medina in case there are tremors.
“It’s a bit like a maze in there,” Ms. Wade said. “So, if anything happens, it’s really hard to get out of the Medina because you get lost quite easily.”
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Tourists walk through Marrakesh on Sunday morning.Credit...Tiago Petinga/EPA, via Shutterstock
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A vehicle crushed by debris sits in front of diners at a restaurant in Marrakesh’s old city on Saturday night.Credit...Hannah Mckay/Reuters
Tourism is a significant sector in the Moroccan economy, accounting for about 7.1 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2019, before the pandemic. It provided an estimated 565,000 jobs, or 5 percent of total employment, according to the The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a 38-country entity that promotes world trade.
Some travel agencies in Morocco have noticed a slight uptick in cancellations, while others said it was largely business as usual.
One company, RJ Travel, had about 50 clients on various private and group tours around the country when the quake struck.
Some of them had to sleep outside because of safety concerns, said Joao Leitao, a founder of the agency. Eventually the situation stabilized, and visitors “were able to continue with their planned itineraries, and our accommodations in Marrakesh were deemed safe,” Mr. Leitao wrote in a statement.
Ayoub Aouraoui, a tour guide for another business, Lopana Travel and Leisure, said the company had to cancel seven excursions in Marrakesh province, where a number of villages experienced damage.
Some people were canceling their trips altogether, deciding to skip Marrakesh in favor of cities elsewhere in Morocco or even outside of the country.
“There are some tourists who decide to go to a city far away from Marrakesh just to be away from the stress,” Mr. Aouraoui said.
A temporary shelter in Amizmiz, Morocco, on Sunday.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Youssef Choula was asleep in his home in Gloucestershire, England, when he awoke to a call from his brother in Marrakesh late Saturday. All he could hear was screams and his brother shouting: “It’s an earthquake! It’s an earthquake!”
By daybreak, the damage was clear: The family’s home in Marrakesh was uninhabitable, and another in his ancestral hometown, Amizmiz, was also severely damaged.
“They have nowhere they can go back to,” Mr. Choula said of his family, who spent Saturday night sleeping in a field with several other families. “They are camping and they don’t know what tomorrow will bring.”
The disaster has stunned the Moroccan diaspora, with many trying to channel grief and horror into action. Some are rallying together to send funds and organize shipments of supplies for survivors while others are heading home to help on the ground.
“There is a very strong attachment to the home country,” said Latif Dehy, 68, who lives in Avignon, a city in southern France with a large Moroccan community.
Mr. Dehy, who helps manage a small nongovernmental organization that funds long-term development projects, said he hoped to harness the outpouring of support for Morocco to do that kind of work there — helping to build new roads and schools, for example.
But Mr. Dehy said he had received dozens of calls from Moroccans who want to immediately send help home.
“People are saying: ‘I have blankets, I have diapers, I have food,’ and are asking where they can bring it all,” he said.
For Moroccans watching from afar, “the only thing that helps them is knowing that they helped, that they didn’t just stand idly by,” Mr. Dehy said.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith, an umbrella group of Muslim organizations, has called upon all mosques in France — which has the largest Moroccan community in Europe because of the countries’ colonial ties — to open their doors to families and friends of the quake’s victims, and it urged people to donate what they could.
Ella Williams, a British doctoral student who has been living in Talat N’yakoub, a town near the quake’s epicenter, was trying to overcome a feeling of helplessness. She arrived in Britain for a visit shortly before the quake struck and has barely slept since, spending hours on the phone trying to locate friends and neighbors as people described to her the horrifying ordeal of searching for relatives in pitch dark.
“It’s been an incredibly difficult few days,” she said. “I’ve lost friends and my friends have lost their families.”
In the midst of her grief, Ms. Williams began raising money for the British Moroccan Society, a charity that promotes connections between the two countries.
As of Sunday afternoon, the group had already raised 50,000 pounds, or $62,000, and had sent out a vehicle filled with food, drinking water and blankets, she said. Ms. Williams was planning to return to Morocco on Monday to coordinate relief efforts on the ground.
Mr. Choula, 41, said he was gathering money to send home. He was born in Amizmiz and has gone back almost every year since, and it was difficult for him to comprehend what will await him upon his next return.
“We are doing the best from our side,” he said, adding that “we will give them comfort if we can.”
Sept. 10, 2023, 2:22 p.m. ET
Vivian Yee
Reporting from Amizmiz, Morocco
People lined up for badly needed aid -- blankets against the nighttime chill, diapers, water -- in Douar Tnirt, a village in the Atlas Mountains in the hard-hit Al Haouz province, where residents were sleeping outdoors. But the aid came from a charity in Marrakesh, not the government, which villagers said had not offered any assistance since the quake struck on Friday.
A rescue worker looks on during an operation on Sunday.Credit...Hannah Mckay/Reuters
Emergency workers trying to rescue survivors still buried under rubble after an earthquake in Morocco almost certainly must complete their work in the next two days, according to Caroline Holt, a senior official at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
But damaged buildings present an “extremely dangerous environment” and the risk of injury to those trying to help is real, said Ms. Holt, director for disaster, climate and crises at the organization.
More than 2,000 people died in Friday’s earthquake, which hit remote and mountainous villages near the city of Marrakesh in southern Morocco. The rough terrain has made it difficult for government rescuers and aid workers to reach many of the affected areas.
But rescuers must act quickly, because after four or five days, the possibility of survival dwindles.
“It’s just a rush, it’s a race against time to just get to those places,” Ms. Holt said, adding that the immediate priority aside from rescue would include clean water, shelter and cooking facilities.
Local residents in the immediate vicinity are almost always the first on the scene with help, followed only later by governments and aid workers, she said. One crucial task will be “mapping” the earthquake zone to assess how many villages and other remote areas are yet to be reached by outside help. But that work is still ongoing, she said.
Ms. Holt said that the magnitude of the destruction caused by the earthquake would test any government’s capacity to respond and Morocco is no exception. Government officials and emergency workers have to personally cope with the disaster like everyone else, and an initial response is often shock.
“I can understand why it’s taking some time to pull together,” she said.
Sept. 10, 2023, 2:01 p.m. ET
Aurelien Breeden
In a breakdown of the 2,122 deaths reported so far, Morocco's interior ministry said more than half -- 1,351 people -- had been killed in Al Haouz province. The next two hardest-hit provinces were Taroudant, with 492 dead, and Chichaoua, with 201 dead. All three provinces overlap with the Atlas Mountains, where many remote villages were devastated by the earthquake. Seventeen deaths have been reported in the area of the major city of Marrakesh.
Sept. 10, 2023, 11:57 a.m. ET
Aurelien Breeden
The death toll from the earthquake has risen to at least 2,122 people, according to Moroccan state television, and more than 2,421 people are injured.
Residents creating a temporary shelter after the earthquake in Morocco destroyed their building in the village of Azgour on Sunday.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
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A temporary shelter in Azgour, outside of Marrakesh.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
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A destroyed living room in a house in Azgour.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Cradled between two ridges of the Atlas Mountains south of Marrakesh is Azgour, a village of roughly 200 that has been reduced to a collapsed sand castle of crumbling mud bricks.
Half of the buildings — some of which dated back to before Morocco’s colonization by the French — were entirely rubble, residents said. The other half were uninhabitable.
On Sunday, a few dozen villagers were living near the ruins of a pink terracotta mosque on a growing pile of colorful blankets and mats in the shade of two trees. Other residents set up similar encampments elsewhere.
Fifteen people were killed when the powerful quake struck late on Friday night. With no power or phone service, there would be no calls for outside help. Young men following screams in the dark pulled people out of the rubble with their bare hands, skipping the use of tools for fear of causing further collapse.
“We didn’t wait for anybody to start saving people’s lives,” said the village’s imam, Abdeljalil Lamghrari, 33.
Wafa Ait Salah, 27, took a bus and hitchhiked for hours to reach Azgour, after being unable to reach her mother and her younger brother by phone. They were fortunate: Her mother, a woman in her fifties, recalled the fear she felt while trapped in her home, before other villagers managed to break through the door.
But another family member, Ms. Ait Salah’s uncle, died in the quake.
Residents buried their dead themselves, unable to wash them, as Muslim burial rituals require, because there was no water.
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Residents of Azgour displaced by the earthquake camped outside on Sunday.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
A lack of water had dogged the village for several years amid a prolonged drought that punished rural areas across the country for so long that wells and streams have all but dried up. With the usual pumping mechanisms broken by the earthquake, the villagers were having to venture miles away to draw water from working wells.
“Rain is forecast for this week,” said Jamal Elabrki, 54, the head of a village association, making an effort at optimism. “Without it, we’re afraid. It’s going to be really bad.”
But almost as pressing was the village’s lack of food. The women had cooked what little they had in their refrigerators for the community, and residents were hoping for the swift arrival of donations or humanitarian aid.
In spite of everything, residents like Ms. Ait Salah did not want to abandon their homes and possessions.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “Everything my mom owns is inside her house.”
Sept. 10, 2023, 11:33 a.m. ET
Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Caroline Holt, a director at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, says the next two days will be crucial for emergency workers trying to rescue survivors from the earthquake. But damaged buildings present an “extremely dangerous environment” and the risk of injury to those trying to help is real, she added.
An aerial view of the Ourika River valley, one of the attractions area hit by the earthquake.Credit...Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters
Al Haouz, the Moroccan region that was hit the hardest by a powerful earthquake on Friday, is home to some of the most spectacular scenery in the country — including the highest peak in the Atlas Mountains and bucolic valleys where domestic and foreign tourists alike enjoy freshly cooked tagines served on picnic tables in the middle of a bubbling river.
The epicenter of the quake was about 30 miles west of Oukaimeden, a popular ski resort in the High Atlas Mountains and southeast of the major southern city of Marrakesh. It was the strongest earthquake to strike the area in at least 123 years, according to the United States Geological Survey.
Regions with highest death tolls
Essaouira
Essaouira
MOROCCO
MARRAKESH
PREFECTURE
AZILAL
Marrakesh
High Atlas Mountains
CHICHAOUA
AL HAOUZ
Epicenter
OUARZAZATE
TAROUDANT
Agadir
MOROCCO
Detail
area
MOROCCO
Essaouira
MARRAKESH
PREFECTURE
AZILAL
Marrakesh
High Atlas Mountains
CHICHAOUA
CHICHAOUA
AL HAOUZ
Epicenter
OUARZAZATE
Agadir
TAROUDANT
MOROCCO
Detail
area
Nearly 1,300 of the 2,012 deaths reported so far by the government were concentrated in the Al Haouz region, which has a population of more than 600,000 and is home to some of the country’s poorest people.
Among the tourist attractions reachable in about an hour’s drive from Marrakesh are the Toubkal Summit, the tallest peak in North Africa, and the stunning Ourika River valley, which cuts through the Atlas Mountains and is a popular destination for Moroccans and foreign visitors who drive the scenic route, where dozens of small restaurants line the shallow, rocky river.
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A woman taking a photograph over the Ourika River.Credit...Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters
But despite its beauty, the region has faced economic challenges.
The area is home to about 40 villages where jobs revolve mostly around tourism and unemployment is running high. Climate change has lowered the productivity of farmland that was already difficult to cultivate, because of the rugged landscape and the arid soil. Many in the younger generations are migrating to cities in search of work.
Many of the houses in this region use traditional mud brick construction methods, which are vulnerable to earthquakes and heavy rains. On Saturday, communications with people living in the area’s small villages were difficult, suggesting that rescue efforts could be complicated.
Sept. 10, 2023, 9:27 a.m. ET
Aida Alami
Reporting from Amizmiz, Morocco
Residents in some villages near the quake's epicenter said the scale of the crisis meant that some of the dead were being buried before they could be washed — an essential Muslim ritual.
Destroyed buildings in the village of Amizmiz, Morocco, on Sunday.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
First came the news, then shock and then a scream. In the small town of Amizmiz in southern Morocco on Sunday, a woman let out a piercing cry as she absorbed the information that her two brothers had been killed in the devastating earthquake.
More than 2,000 people were killed in the quake that hit Morocco on Friday night, according to the authorities. Hardest hit was the province of Al Haouz, which is home to Amizmiz, wherea small crowd was growing to comfort the crying woman.
Lacher Anflouss, 37, the woman’s nephew, said that his aunt had grown up with her brothers in a village higher on the nearby Atlas Mountains. She had moved away when she married, but her brothers had stayed.
In the quake’s immediate aftermath cellphone service was down, making it difficult for people to get immediate news of loved ones, Mr. Anflouss said. Once his aunt heard what had happened to her brothers, he said, she had attempted to get as close as possible to their town.
“A lot of people are reacting quietly at first because they still haven’t processed it,” said Mr. Anflouss, adding, in an explanation of her scream: “And then when they finally process it…”
His aunt, whom he did not name, was led away from a small crowd that had gathered by another woman who put her arm around her and rubbed her back. Talk in the crowd turned to a rumor that another house in Amizmiz had just collapsed, and the possibility of more victims.
Ambulances and tents lined the roads of the town, which stands at the base of the mountains. Some residents had spent the night in yellow tents provided by firefighters, while rested behind makeshift shelters of colorful fabric and plastic tarps held down by rocks. Emergency responders also had brought food and blankets, residents said.
Sept. 10, 2023, 8:24 a.m. ET
Cassandra Vinograd
It’s after 1 p.m. in Morocco and there’s been no update from the authorities on the toll from the quake in more than 15 hours. The last update from the Interior Ministry was at 10 p.m. on Saturday, saying that more than 2,000 people had been killed in the quake.
Emergency workers searching a destroyed building in Amizmiz, Morocco, on Sunday.Credit...Nacho Doce/Reuters
With search and rescue efforts intensifying in Morocco on Sunday, some foreign governments began deploying humanitarian and medical aid to assist as others said they were still waiting for Morocco to formally request help.
Tunisia’s Interior Ministry said it was sending a team of about 50 people, including medical staff and search dogs, to help with rescue efforts. A field hospital, advanced thermal monitoring devices and a drone to look for victims under the debris would also be deployed, it added in a statement.
Qatar also is sending a search and rescue team, according to the state-run Qatari News Agency, along with specialized vehicles, equipment and urgent humanitarian aid to “ alleviate the suffering of those affected by the earthquake.”
Spain received an official call for aid from Morocco on Sunday morning, the country’s foreign affairs minister, José Manuel Albares, told local radio. He said Spain would send search and rescue teams to try to “find the greatest number of people alive.” The Spanish Interior Ministry confirmed that a contingent of about 65 people had been dispatched.
Other countries that had pledged to help said they were still waiting to hear from Moroccan officials what resources were needed. President Emmanuel Macron of France said his government was in touch with Moroccan authorities and stood ready to assist. “The moment, the second they ask, we will deploy,” he said on the sidelines of the G20 summit in India.
The leader of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also said Sunday that his country was ready to “extend all our help.” Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority had said on Saturday that it was on standby for Morocco’s call to deliver some 265 staff and 1,000 tents to the region.
The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said in a statement on Sunday with other leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, that it was ready to mobilize. “We will stand alongside Morocco to provide all the assistance necessary for urgent short-term needs as well as reconstruction efforts.”
Kuwait also offered to send applies, according to its state-run news wire, and Taiwan’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that it would donate $500,000 to relief efforts.
Even countries with historically thorny relationships with Morocco have offered to help, underscoring the scale of the disaster.
The foreign minister of Israel, which only normalized relations with Morocco in 2020, said on Sunday that his country was preparing a rescue mission to the disaster area and would also send humanitarian aid.
And Algeria, which broke off relations with Morocco in 2021, has promised to reopen its airspace for flights providing aid.
Mujib Mashal contributed reporting from New Delhi and Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris.
Sept. 10, 2023, 6:28 a.m. ET
Isabella Kwai
Qatar is sending specialized vehicles and equipment to help with search and rescue efforts, state media reported, but some countries were still waiting for Morocco to formally request help.
Sept. 10, 2023, 6:29 a.m. ET
Mujib Mashal
French President Emmanuel Macron said his government was in touch with the Moroccan authorities and stood ready to assist. “The moment, the second they ask, we will deploy,” he said on the sidelines of the G20 summit in India.
Sept. 10, 2023, 6:00 a.m. ET
Vivian Yee
Reporting from Amizmiz, Morocco
Ambulances and tents lined the road in Amizmiz, a town in the hardest-hit province of Al Haouz. Some residents had spent the night in yellow tents provided by firefighters, others behind makeshift shelters of colorful fabric and plastic tarps held down by rocks. Emergency responders also had brought food and blankets, residents said.
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Credit...Vivian Yee for The New York Times
Sept. 10, 2023, 5:52 a.m. ET
Nada Rashwan
Reporting from Cairo
The stars of Morocco’s national football team have responded to the health system’s urgent call for blood donations and urged others to do the same. A video posted on the team’s Facebook page shows players visiting a blood transfusion center. “We encourage all Moroccans to donate their blood, because it’s important. Many people are injured,” the team manager, Walid Regragui, said as his blood was drawn.
Sept. 10, 2023, 5:53 a.m. ET
Nada Rashwan
Reporting from Cairo
Football is Morocco’s household sport and national pride. Its team made history last year when it became the first African team to reach the FIFA World Cup semi-final. A match between Morocco and Liberia in the African Cup of Nations qualifiers, which was scheduled on Saturday night in the city of Agadir, was canceled due to the earthquake.
Sept. 10, 2023, 5:38 a.m. ET
Matthew Mpoke Bigg
A 3.9 magnitude earthquake struck the Marrakesh-Safi region on Sunday, according to the United States Geological Survey’s website. The quake, almost certainly an aftershock, hit at around six miles depth just before 9 a.m. in the southern part of the region, close to the epicenter of Friday's much larger quake.
Sept. 10, 2023, 5:19 a.m. ET
Isabella Kwai
Spain has received an official call for aid from Morocco, the country’s foreign affairs minister, José Manuel Albares, told local radio. He said Spain would send search and rescue teams to try to “find the greatest number of people alive.”
Sept. 10, 2023, 5:14 a.m. ET
Vivian Yee
Reporting from Amizmiz, Morocco
Reports were emerging on social media that some villages in the earthquake zone had yet to receive any aid more than a day after the temblor struck. One man who said he was volunteering as a rescuer in Taroudant province, southwest of the epicenter, begged for more assistance in an Instagram video. “We don’t have any food or water. There are still people underground. Some of them are still alive,” he said adding, “There are some villages that we couldn’t reach.”
Some teams of volunteer rescue workers have arrived in Morocco, but other associations have expressed frustration over a lack of access. Arnaud Fraisse, the founder of Secouristes Sans Frontières, said Morocco had not given his organization a green-light. “The Moroccan government is completely blocking rescue teams” except for one from Qatar which has already landed, he told France Inter Radio. “We do not understand.”
Sept. 10, 2023, 4:48 a.m. ET
Aurelien Breeden
Secouristes Sans Frontières, which has intervened to assist with rescue efforts in other earthquakes including one which hit Turkey in February, said it was equipped with cameras and listening devices to help locate victims trapped underneath the rubble.
Sept. 10, 2023, 4:10 a.m. ET
Matthew Mpoke Bigg
With rescue efforts underway, temperatures in the city of Marrakesh were set to rise to 88 degrees on Sunday with clear skies, a little cooler than normal for this time of year. The weather in the Atlas Mountains, site of some of the worst hit areas, was likely to be considerably cooler.
Sept. 10, 2023, 3:28 a.m. ET
Vivian Yee
Reporting from Amizmiz, Morocco
People pitched tents on the sides of the roads outside Marrakesh's historic center for a second night. But there were also signs of normal Sunday activity, with tourists crowding breakfast buffets at large hotels, traffic picking up on roads and some businesses opening.
Sept. 10, 2023, 2:10 a.m. ET
Vivian Yee
Reporting from Amizmiz, Morocco
On a road heading south into Marrakesh, people slept on grassy medians, roundabouts and by the side of the road on Sunday, nearly two days after the strongest quake in 100 years struck the southern and central parts of Morocco. Some huddled under colorful blankets or stared at their phones, while others slept in their cars after losing their homes or fearing aftershocks.
Rescuers in Morocco raced to reach remote areas in the mountains outside Marrakesh on Sunday after the worst earthquake to hit the area in a century flattened homes across central and southern parts of the country, killing more than 2,100 people.
The extent of the damage and number of casualties after the magnitude-6.8 earthquake late Friday night remained unclear because the hardest-hit communities are in the High Atlas Mountains, where the few roads appeared to be blocked by debris and where phone service and electricity have been knocked out.
The state news media showed footage of helicopters airlifting aid to remote areas where many homes are made of mud bricks, a traditional construction method that is highly vulnerable to earthquakes and heavy rains.
The next few days are expected to be crucial for emergency workers trying to rescue survivors. The damaged buildings present an “extremely dangerous environment,” and the risk of injury to those trying to help is real, said Caroline Holt, a director at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
In Marrakesh, the largest city in southern Morocco, residents confronted piles of rubble from buildings that had crumbled around them. In the rural areas outside the city, Moroccans climbed through the canyons between collapsed homes to retrieve bodies. And in some remote areas, residents sifted through mountains of debris with their bare hands in search of survivors.
From isolated mountain villages to the roads into Marrakesh, people set up camp outside, either because their homes were uninhabitable or because they feared aftershocks. The United States Geological Survey said that a 3.9-magnitude earthquake, almost certainly an aftershock, struck the area just before 9 a.m. on Sunday.
Here are other details:
At least 2,122 people were killed in the quake, Moroccan state television reported late Sunday afternoon, and more than 2,421 people were injured.
Spain said it was sending search and rescue teams to Morocco, and Qatari state media reported that Qatar would deploy specialized vehicles and equipment. But some countries were still waiting for Morocco to request help formally. “The moment, the second they ask, we will deploy,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in India.
The Moroccan authorities announced three days of national mourning. The Moroccan Army said the air force was evacuating those hurt from the hardest hit region, Al Haouz, to a military hospital in Marrakesh. The king’s office said that after a crisis meeting with officials in Rabat, the capital, he had ordered the government to provide shelter rapidly and rebuild houses for those in distress, “particularly orphans and the vulnerable.”
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement that more than 300,000 civilians in Marrakesh and its outskirts had been affected by the earthquake. “Many families are trapped under the rubble of their homes, and damage to parts of Marrakesh’s Medina, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, have also been reported,” the statement said.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg contributed reporting.
A correction was made on
Sept. 10, 2023
:
An earlier version of this article misstated the death toll of the earthquake as of Saturday night. It was 2,012, not 2,059.
How we handle corrections
Sept. 9, 2023, 6:06 p.m. ET
Aida Alami
Reporting from Amizmiz, Morocco
The death toll from the earthquake has reached at least 2,012 people, according to Morocco’s Interior Ministry late Saturday night.
A volunteer planting a Turkish flag in the rubble in Antakya City, Turkey, in February. A powerful earthquake struck in the region and inflicted damage in southern Turkey and eastern Syria.Credit...Emily Garthwaite for The New York Times
One of the first countries to offer help to Morocco on Saturday was Turkey, which experienced its own powerful earthquake that spread devastation throughout its southern region and into neighboring Syria. Turkey said it would send personnel and supplies, including 265 aid workers and 1,000 tents, to Morocco.
Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, a government organization, said in a message posted on X, formerly Twitter, that it was standing by to dispatch personnel as soon as Moroccan officials would allow.
Turkey and Syria are still recovering from a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck in the early hours of Feb. 6 and was followed by a 7.5-magnitude aftershock hours later that was nearly as powerful. The affected area spread over 200 miles. In Turkey, authorities said more than 43,000 people had died; In Syria, the death toll surpassed 5,500, according to figures from the United Nations.
Thousands of buildings were destroyed or rendered unstable, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without shelter in rain, snow and temperatures that often dipped below freezing.
Now, more than seven months later both countries are still in the process of rebuilding and recovering. Turkey will likely be sending people with recent expertise in the rescue process after emergency workers spent several days searching for survivors in the rubble and then several more weeks trying to recover the bodies of victims.
Morocco is likely to need people with that kind of experience. The country’s interior ministry said Saturday night that the death toll from the earthquake, which struck the western High Atlas Mountains region, had surpassed 1,300, and that more than 1,800 people were injured. Rescuers were continuing to comb through the rubble in search of survivors all over the region.
