Morocco earthquake toll passes 2,800 as rescuers search for survivors

Kiltom Aitbrahimoblla holds her 15-day-old child Salah Achariy, who survived the deadly earthquake, in Tinmel, Morocco, September 11, 2023. (REUTERS)
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Updated 12 September 2023
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Morocco earthquake toll passes 2,800 as rescuers search for survivors

  • Among the dead was 7-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

TALAT N’YAAQOUB, Morocco: Villagers wept for lost relatives in the rubble of their homes on Monday as the death toll from Morocco’s deadliest earthquake in more than six decades rose to more than 2,800 and rescuers raced against time to find survivors.
Search teams from Spain, Britain and Qatar were joining Moroccan rescue efforts after a 6.8 magnitude quake struck late on Friday in the High Atlas Mountains, with the epicenter 72 km (45 miles) southwest of Marrakech.
State TV reported the death toll had 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.




A man looks at the rubble of homes in the mountain village of Imi N'Tala, south of Marrakech, on September 10, 2023. (AFP)

Among the dead was 7-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 had spent Monday trying to salvage items from the debris of his house.
In the village of Tagadirte, where few buildings had been left standing, 66-year-old Mohamed Ouchen described how residents pulled 25 people alive from the rubble in the immediate aftermath of the quake.




A youth carries sanitary supplies to the destroyed Imoulas village in the Taroudant province, one of the most devastated in quake-hit Morocco, on September 11, 2023.

One of those rescued was his own sister.
“We were busy rescuing, because we didn’t have tools, we used our hands,” he said. “Her head was visible and we kept digging by hand.”
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.”




Emergency personnel disembark from a helicopter to support rescue operations in the mountainous area of Tizi N'Test, in the Taroudant province, one of the most devastated in quake-hit Morocco, on September 11, 2023. (AFP)

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.

DAMAGE TO HERITAGE
After an initial response that was described as too slow by some survivors, search and rescue efforts appeared to be speeding up on Monday, with tent camps appearing in some locations where people were preparing for a fourth night outdoors.
A video filmed by Moroccan outlet 2M showed a military helicopter flying over an area close to the epicenter, dropping sacks of essential supplies to isolated families.




Family members react near the rubble of collapsed buildings in the village of Imi N'Tala near Amizmiz in central Morocco after the deadly 6.8-magnitude September 8 earthquake, on September 10, 2023.

With much of the quake zone in hard-to-reach areas, the authorities have not issued any estimates for the number of people missing.
The harm done to Morocco’s cultural heritage has been emerging gradually. Buildings in Marrakech old city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were damaged. The quake also did major damage to the historically significant 12th-century Tinmel Mosque.
Residents in Tinmel, a remote village close to the epicenter where 15 people were killed, said they had been sharing food, water and medicine, but desperately needed tents and blankets to shelter from the cold mountain nights.

AID EFFORT
It was the North African country’s deadliest earthquake since 1960, when a tremor was estimated to have killed at least 12,000 people, and the most powerful since at least 1900, according to the US Geological Survey.
In a televised statement on Sunday, government spokesperson Mustapha Baytas defended the government’s response, saying every effort was being made on the ground.
The army said it was reinforcing search-and-rescue teams, providing drinking water and distributing food, tents and blankets.
A major road connecting the High Atlas Mountains to Marrakech was gridlocked on Monday evening as heavy vehicles and volunteers carrying relief supplies headed toward some of the hardest hit communities in remote areas of the mountains.
Moroccan volunteers and civilians, aided by some foreigners, helped direct traffic and clear the road of rock debris.
Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch told local media the government would compensate victims, but gave few details.
The Moroccan government wants to proceed with International Monetary Fund-World Bank annual meetings scheduled for next month in Marrakech, two sources familiar with the planning said.
Morocco has accepted offers of aid from Spain and Britain, which both sent search-and-rescue specialists with sniffer dogs, and from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. State TV said the government might accept relief offers from other countries later. ($1 = 0.9323 euro)

 


Israel minister says army will ‘ensure Iran cannot threaten’ country again

Updated 4 sec ago
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Israel minister says army will ‘ensure Iran cannot threaten’ country again

  • Arch-foes fought a 12-day war last month
JERUSALEM: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Friday said the army had a plan to prevent Iran from threatening Israel again after the arch-foes fought a 12-day war last month.
The Israeli military will prepare an “enforcement plan to ensure that Iran cannot threaten Israel again,” Katz said in a statement, adding that “the army must prepare on the intelligence and operational level to ensure that the Air Force maintains air superiority over Tehran.”

Trump expects Hamas decision in 24 hours on ‘final’ Gaza peace proposal

Updated 04 July 2025
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Trump expects Hamas decision in 24 hours on ‘final’ Gaza peace proposal

  • Israel has earlier agreed on terms for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Friday it would probably be known in 24 hours whether the Palestinian militant group Hamas has agreed to accept what he has called a “final proposal” for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza.

The president also said he had spoken to Saudi Arabia about expanding the Abraham Accords, the deal on normalization of ties that his administration negotiated between Israel and some Gulf countries during his first term.

Trump said on Tuesday Israel had accepted the conditions needed to finalize a 60-day ceasefire with Hamas, during which the parties will work to end the war.

He was asked on Friday if Hamas had agreed to the latest ceasefire deal framework, and said: “We’ll see what happens, we are going to know over the next 24 hours.”

A source close to Hamas said on Thursday the Islamist group sought guarantees that the new US-backed ceasefire proposal would lead to the end of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Two Israeli officials said those details were still being worked out. Dozens of Palestinians were killed on Thursday in Israeli strikes, according to Gaza authorities.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered in October 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, Israeli tallies show.

Gaza’s health ministry says Israel’s subsequent military assault has killed over 56,000 Palestinians. It has also caused a hunger crisis, internally displaced Gaza’s entire population and prompted accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice and of war crimes at the International Criminal Court. Israel denies the accusations.

A previous two month ceasefire ended when Israeli strikes killed more than 400 Palestinians on March 18. Trump earlier this year proposed a US takeover of Gaza, which was condemned globally by rights experts, the UN and Palestinians as a proposal of “ethnic cleansing.”

Abraham Accords

Trump made the comments on the Abraham Accords when asked about US media reporting late on Thursday that he had met Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman at the White House.

“It’s one of the things we talked about,” Trump said. “I think a lot of people are going to be joining the Abraham accords,” he added, citing the predicted expansion to the damage faced by Iran from recent US and Israeli strikes.

Axios reported that after the meeting with Trump, the Saudi official spoke on the phone with Abdolrahim Mousavi, chief of Iran’s General Staff of the Armed Forces.

Trump’s meeting with the Saudi official came ahead of a visit to Washington next week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.


Darfur civilians ‘face mass atrocities and ethnic violence’

Updated 04 July 2025
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Darfur civilians ‘face mass atrocities and ethnic violence’

  • Medical charity warns of new threat from escalation in fighting in Sudan civil war

KHARTOUM: Civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan face mass atrocities and ethnic violence in the civil war between the regular army and its paramilitary rivals, the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Thursday.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have sought to consolidate their power in Darfur since losing control of the capital Khartoum in March. Their predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, was accused of genocide in Darfur two decades ago.

The paramilitaries have intensified attacks on El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state which they have besieged since May 2024 in an effort to push the army out of its final stronghold in the region.
“People are not only caught in indiscriminate heavy fighting ... but also actively targeted by the Rapid Support Forces and their allies, notably on the basis of their ethnicity,” said Michel-Olivier Lacharite, Medecins Sans Frontieres’ head of emergencies. There were “threats of a full-blown assault,” on El-Fasher, which is home to hundreds of thousands of people largely cut off from food and water supplies and deprived of access to medical care, he said.


Egypt on alert as giant dam in Ethiopia completed

Updated 04 July 2025
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Egypt on alert as giant dam in Ethiopia completed

ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia moved on Thursday to reassure Egypt about its water supply after completing work on a controversial giant $4 billion dam on the Blue Nile.

“To our neighbors downstream, our message is clear: the dam is not a threat, but a shared opportunity,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said.

“The energy and development it will generate stand to uplift not just Ethiopia. We believe in shared progress, shared energy, and shared water. Prosperity for one should mean prosperity for all.”

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is 1.8 km wide and 145 meters high, and is Africa's largest hydroelectric project. It can hold 74 billion cubic meters of water and generate more than 5,000 megawatts of power — more than double Ethiopia’s current output. It will begin full operations in September.

Egypt already suffers from severe water scarcity and sees the dam as an existential threat because the country relies on the Nile for 97 percent of its water. President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Sudan’s leader Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan met last week and “stressed their rejection of any unilateral measures in the Blue Nile basin.” They were committed to safeguarding water security in the region, Sisi’s spokesman said.


Explosive drone intercepted near Irbil airport in northern Iraq, security statement says

Updated 03 July 2025
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Explosive drone intercepted near Irbil airport in northern Iraq, security statement says

  • The “Flight operations at the airport continued normally,” the Irbil airport authority said

IRBIL, Iraq: An explosive drone was shot down near Irbil airport in northern Iraq on Thursday, the Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service said in a statement.

There were no casualties reported, according to two security sources.

The “Flight operations at the airport continued normally and the airport was not affected by any damage,” the Irbil airport authority said in a statement.

The incident only caused a temporary delay in the landing of one aircraft, the statement added.