Rescuers are racing against time to find survivors in the remote areas hit hardest by Morocco’s deadliest earthquake in more than six decades, with the death toll climbing to more than 2,800 people.
Search teams from Spain, the United Kingdom and Qatar have joined Moroccan rescue efforts after the magnitude 6.8 quake struck late on Friday in the High Atlas Mountains, with the epicentre 72km (45 miles) southwest of Marrakesh.
State television reported that the death toll has risen to 2,862 with 2,562 people injured. Rescuers said the traditional mud brick houses ubiquitous in the region reduced the chances of finding survivors because they had crumbled.
Among the dead was seven-year-old Suleiman Aytnasr, whose mother had carried him to his bedroom after he fell asleep in the living room of their home in a hamlet outside Talat N’Yaaqoub, in one of the worst-hit areas. He had been about to start a new school year.
“As she came back, the earthquake happened and the ceiling was destroyed and fell on him,” said Suleiman’s father, Brahim Aytnasr, whose eyes were red from crying. He spent Monday trying to salvage items from the debris of his house.
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.”
Despite the scale of the damage, he said rescuers searching with dogs still hoped to find survivors.
“I am sure that in the coming days, there will be some rescues. We think that there may still be people in the collapsed structures, that there may have been pockets of air, and as I say, we never give up hope,” he said.
Source: Al Jazeera
