Powerful quake k i l l s at least 296 in Morocco

A powerful earthquake struck Morocco's High Atlas mountains late on Friday, killing at least 296 people, destroying buildings and sending residents of major cities rushing from their homes.

Morocco’s Interior Ministry said early on Saturday that the reported number of dead and injured was a preliminary figure.

“According to a provisional report, the earthquake killed 296 people in the provinces and municipalities of al-Haouz, Marrakesh, Ouarzazate, Azilal, Chichaoua and Taroudant,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that 153 people were injured and hospitalised.

The earthquake hit shortly after 11pm local time (22:00 GMT) on Friday evening, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), according to Aljazeera reports.

The USGS estimates that the epicentre of the quake occurred near the ski resort of Oukaimeden in the Atlas Mountains, some 75km (44 miles) from Marrakesh, the fourth largest city in the country.

Reports of damage emerged from Marrakesh’s old town, known as the Medina, a historic web of red walls and tight streets recognised as a world heritage site by UNESCO. But the extent of the devastation is not immediately known.

Videos and images shared on social media, meanwhile, showed clouds of dust and piles of rubble as walls buckled under the force of the quake. Other posts depicted shocked residents running for safety out of local buildings and onto the streets.

One Marrakesh resident, Brahim Himmi, told the Reuters news agency that he spotted ambulances leaving the city’s historic old town. He also said that building facades had been damaged as the earth shook.

“There’s not too much damage, more panic. We heard screams at the time of the tremor,” a resident of another city, Essaouira. “People are in the squares, in the cafes, preferring to sleep outside.”

While earthquakes in the region are “uncommon but not unexpected”, one of this magnitude has not been seen in the immediate area in over 120 years. “Since 1900, there have been no earthquakes M6 [magnitude 6] or larger within 500km of this earthquake, and only nine M5 [magnitude 5] and larger,” the USGS said on its website.

Most of those previous earthquakes occurred further to the east as well, the agency added.

Friday evening’s earthquake was a relatively shallow one, occurring at a depth of 18.5km (11.5 miles). The USGS explained that “oblique-reverse faulting” in the Atlas Mountains was the cause of the quake.

The last major earthquake to strike Morocco occurred in 2004, killing over 600 people. That quake, dubbed the Al Hoceima earthquake, was positioned on an active plate boundary on the country’s northernmost coast, bordering the western Mediterranean Sea. It clocked in at a magnitude of 6.3.

An even larger quake struck neighbouring Algeria in 1980. Known as the El Asnam earthquake, the 7.3-magnitude event was the strongest seismic activity the region had seen in centuries. Also originating in the Atlas Mountain range, it levelled houses, leaving 300,000 people on the street and over 2,600 people dead.

Read More