{"id":2523,"date":"2023-09-10T07:34:05","date_gmt":"2023-09-10T07:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/morocco-mourns-quake-victims-as-death-toll-passes-2000\/"},"modified":"2023-09-10T07:34:05","modified_gmt":"2023-09-10T07:34:05","slug":"morocco-mourns-quake-victims-as-death-toll-passes-2000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/morocco-mourns-quake-victims-as-death-toll-passes-2000\/","title":{"rendered":"Morocco mourns quake victims as death toll passes 2,000"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div dir=\"auto\">\n<p>Moroccans on Sunday mourned the victims of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1774900\/at-least-632-killed-after-68-magnitude-quake-strikes-morocco-state-tv\">devastating earthquake<\/a> that killed more than 2,000 people, as rescue teams raced to find survivors trapped in the rubble of flattened villages.<\/p>\n<p>The strongest-ever quake to hit the country has killed at least 2,012 people and injured over 2,059, many of them critically, according to the latest official figures.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media  sm:w-1\/2  w-full  media--right  media--embed  media--uneven\">\n<p>    <iframe class=\"nk-iframe\" onload=\"setInterval(()=&gt;{try{this.style.height=this.contentWindow.document.body.scrollHeight+'px';}catch{}}, 100)\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" style=\"height:400px;position:relative\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/card\/1774915\" sandbox=\"allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-modals allow-forms\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Friday\u2019s 6.8-magnitude quake struck 72 kilometres southwest of the tourist hub of Marrakesh, wiping out entire villages in rural areas.<\/p>\n<p>The World Health Organisation said more than 300,000 people were affected in Marrakech and surrounding areas.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve lost everything\u201d, said Lahcen, a resident of the mountain village of Moulay Brahim, whose wife and four children were killed.<\/p>\n<p>Rescue workers recovered the bodies of Lahcen\u2019s three daughters from the rubble of what was once their home, but have not yet found the bodies of his wife and son. \u201cI can\u2019t do anything about it now, I just want to get away from the world and mourn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Troops and emergency services have scrambled to reach remote mountain villages where victims are still feared trapped.<\/p>\n<p>In the village of Amizmiz near the epicentre, rescue workers picked through rubble with their bare hands. Fallen masonry blocked narrow streets. Outside a hospital, around 10 bodies lay covered in blankets as grieving relatives stood nearby.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I felt the earth shaking beneath my feet and the house leaning, I rushed to get my kids out. But my neighbours couldn\u2019t,\u201d said Mohamed Azaw. \u201cUnfortunately no one was found alive in that family. The father and son were found dead and they are still looking for the mother and the daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rescuers stood atop the pancaked floors of one building in Amizmiz, bits of carpet and furniture protruding from the rubble. A long queue formed outside the only open shop as people sought supplies. Underlining the challenges facing rescuers, fallen boulders blocked a road from Amizmiz to a nearby village.<\/p>\n<p>Al-Haouz province, where the epicentre of the earthquake was located, suffered the most deaths with 1,293, followed by the province of Taroudant with 452.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly all the houses in the area of Asni, some 40 km south of Marrakech, were damaged, and villagers were preparing to spend the night outside. Food was in short supply as roofs had collapsed on kitchens, said villager Mohamed Ouhammo.<\/p>\n<p>Montasir Itri, a resident of Asni, said the search was on for survivors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur neighbours are under the rubble and people are working hard to rescue them using available means in the village,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The village of Tansghart in the Ansi area, on the side of a valley where the road from Marrakech rises up into the High Atlas, was the worst hit of any <em>Reuters<\/em> saw. Its once-pretty houses, clinging to a steep hillside, were cracked open by the shaking ground. Those still standing were missing chunks of wall or plaster. Two mosque minarets had fallen.<\/p>\n<p>Abdellatif Ait Bella, a labourer, lay on the ground, barely able to move or speak, his head bandaged from wounds caused by falling debris.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have no house to take him to and have had no food since yesterday,\u201d said his wife Saida Bodchich, fearing for the future of their family of six with their sole breadwinner so badly hurt. \u201cWe can rely on nobody but God.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><a id=\"first-funerals\" href=\"#first-funerals\" class=\"heading-permalink\" aria-hidden=\"true\" title=\"Permalink\"\/>First funerals<\/h2>\n<p>Bouchra, another resident of Moulay Brahim, dried her tears with her scarf as she watched men digging graves to bury the victims.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy cousin\u2019s grandchildren are dead\u201d, she said in a knotted voice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI saw the devastation of the earthquake live, and I\u2019m still shaking. It\u2019s like a ball of fire that has swallowed up everything in its path,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEveryone here has lost family, whether in our village or elsewhere in the region,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p>Fatema Satir, a resident in Marrakesh, told <em>AFP<\/em> many were sleeping in the street for fear of their houses collapsing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook where all these people are sleeping. There is no help for us, our houses have been cracked, others destroyed like my daughter\u2019s house, which was wiped out. We are in a chaotic state.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Authorities declared three days of national mourning, while several countries, including Israel, France, Spain, Italy and the United States, have offered aid.<\/p>\n<p>Neighbouring Algeria, which has had rocky relations with Morocco, opened its airspace, which had been closed for two years, to flights carrying humanitarian aid and the injured.<\/p>\n<h2><a id=\"years-of-aid\" href=\"#years-of-aid\" class=\"heading-permalink\" aria-hidden=\"true\" title=\"Permalink\"\/>\u2018Years of aid\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>The Red Cross warned that it could take years to repair the damage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt won\u2019t be a matter of a week or two\u2026 We are counting on a response that will take months, if not years,\u201d Hossam Elsharkawi, the organisation\u2019s Middle East and North Africa director, said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>The village of Tafeghaghte, 60km southwest of Marrakesh, was almost entirely destroyed by the quake, the epicentre of which was only about 50 kilometres away, an <em>AFP<\/em> team reported, with very few buildings still standing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThree of my grandchildren and their mother are dead,\u201d said 72-year-old Omar Benhanna. \u201cThey\u2019re still under the debris. It wasn\u2019t so long ago that we were playing together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Residents buried around 70 victims in the nearby cemetary on Saturday, as the funeral rites were punctuated by cries and screams.<\/p>\n<p>In the evening, television channels broadcast aerial images showing entire villages of clay houses in the Al-Haouz region completely destroyed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe public authorities are still mobilised to speed up rescue operations and evacuate the injured,\u201d the interior ministry said on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n<p>The Moroccan armed forces will deploy rescue teams to provide affected areas with clean drinking water, food supplies, tents and blankets, the royal court said.<\/p>\n<p>The tremor was also felt in the coastal cities of Rabat, Casablanca, Agadir and Essaouira, where many panicked residents took to the streets in the middle of the night, fearing that their homes would collapse.<\/p>\n<p>This earthquake is the deadliest in Morocco since the 1960 quake that destroyed Agadir, in which more than 12,000 people, about a third of the city\u2019s population at the time, died.<\/p>\n<p>Marrakech is due to host the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank from October 9.<\/p>\n<p>An IMF spokesperson, asked about the planned meetings, said: \u201cOur sole focus at this time is on the people of Morocco and the authorities who are dealing with this tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moroccans on Sunday mourned the victims of a devastating earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people, as rescue teams raced to find survivors trapped in the rubble of flattened villages. The strongest-ever quake to hit the country has killed at least 2,012 people and injured over 2,059, many of them critically, according to the latest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2023\/09\/1011564814c68c1.jpg?r=115702","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-islamabad-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}