Rescue teams on Wednesday intensified their efforts to bring aid to the country’s devastated mountain villages, as the chances of finding survivors of this powerful earthquake, which has killed 2,901 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless, fade. fading.
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Rescue operations continue in Morocco. Almost five days after the terrible earthquake that hit the High Atlas region, southwest of the tourist city of Marrakech, on September 8, the latest balance from the Moroccan authorities reports at least 2,901 dead and 5,530 injured.
Firefighters and soldiers from the Moroccan Royal Guard continue searching through the rubble in the most affected towns. In this race against time, hopes of finding survivors diminish by the minute. To speed up operations, the Moroccan authorities only accepted specific help from reinforcement teams from Spain, the United Kingdom, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
In the case of the Moroccan soldiers, they try to unblock the roads that lead to the most remote and mountainous municipalities that still await a rescue. Moroccan authorities also opened field hospitals to care for the wounded.
Distribution of tents to alleviate the destruction of homes
For its part, the Red Cross called for funds worth around €100 million to support relief operations, in addition to releasing one million Swiss francs from its Emergency Fund. The German Red Cross also announced this Tuesday that it will send humanitarian aid to the most affected areas.
“We are working in many places that vehicles cannot reach,” Captain Fahas Abdullah al-Dosanri, of the Qatari fire department, explained to the ‘AFP’ agency. Other rescue teams also distributed tents, blankets and mattresses to residents who lost their homes and have nowhere to shelter.
While these camps are forming, some fear the arrival of rain. This is the case of Afrah Fouzia, from the municipality of Tikhte, who told ‘AFP’ that “the authorities are not telling us anything. Soon it will start to rain and get colder, and there are many children here.”
Although other citizens have taken refuge in the homes of relatives and friends, and the authorities have set up a reception center in Marrakech to care for the displaced, the efforts seem insufficient and many people continue to sleep on the streets.
Waiting for rescue teams, citizen solidarity
The slowness of the deployment of national and foreign rescuers has generated criticism among the population. In towns like Amizmiz, Tnirte or Inhegede, residents have waited up to four days for the arrival of the first firefighters and soldiers.
Therefore, volunteers from the affected areas have organized to provide help to the victims. In the town of Adassil, people affected by the disaster gathered at an improvised aid distribution point, staffed by about twenty volunteers from the town of Iznit, some 400 kilometers away.
“We made an appeal on Facebook and in less than half an hour an avalanche of donations began to arrive,” Mariam El Bakrem, a 38-year-old Moroccan who claims to have chartered about forty trucks full of food and clothing for the regions, told AFP. affected.
King Mohamed VI visited a hospital in Marrakech
After several days of absence, King Mohamed VI appeared in public on Tuesday, September 12. For twenty minutes, the king visited a hospital in Marrakech and made a blood donation. A “strong gesture that attests to royal benevolence and expresses the sovereign’s total solidarity and compassion towards the victims and their grieving families,” the Moroccan press officially reproduced.
Along the same lines, the absence of the King aroused the anger of the population. Mohamed was in France for a private trip when the earthquake occurred. Only on Saturday did he return to Rabat, to lead work meetings and organize the first rescue missions. However, official communication during the hospital visit shows that the sovereign’s appearance was expected to embody the political response to the catastrophe.
The magnitude 7 earthquake on the Richter scale was the most powerful ever experienced in the country’s history. It was also the deadliest in the kingdom since the one that destroyed Agadir, on the west coast, on February 29, 1960. Between 12,000 and 15,000 people died then, a third of the city’s population.
Pope Francis, who traveled to Morocco in 2019, expressed a message of solidarity “to the noble Moroccan people”: “Let us pray for Morocco, let us pray for the people so that the Lord gives them the strength to recover.”
With AFP and EFE
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