Survivors of Morocco’s worst earthquake in sixty years have told of the horror of living next to bodies still buried beneath collapsed houses that are beginning to rot four days after the disaster.
Aziz, a villager from Ijoukak, 10 miles from the quake’s epicenter, said: “So far we have not found any survivors, only the dead buried under the rubble… the smell of corpses is very, very strong.” “We always have still no electricity and no water.”
The death toll is now over 2,800 and is expected to rise as hopes fade of getting those still trapped under piles of rubble after Friday’s magnitude 6.8 quake.
Desperate villagers still waiting for help in the worst-hit regions of the Atlas Mountains reported searching for survivors themselves, digging with their bare hands to retrieve the bodies of their neighbors and loved ones from the rubble.
After spending a fourth night sleeping outdoors on Monday – either in makeshift tents or under the stars in rural areas and on the streets of Marrakech – many Moroccans are waking up today still waiting for help.
A victim covered with a sheet is carried to a makeshift grave that has just been dug in Talat N’yakoub
Desperate villagers still waiting for help in the hardest-hit regions of the Atlas Mountains said they had to search for survivors themselves
A victim is carried away by rescue workers in Talat N’yakoub, Morocco
A group of men carry the body of a local man killed in the quake to place it in a freshly dug grave
Because houses in earthquake-affected villages in the High Atlas are typically built of adobe, stone and clay, it is usually more difficult for people to survive in them than in modern buildings destroyed by earthquakes.
“If this all collapses, you don’t have much chance of survival because there are no air pockets,” said Arnaud Fraisse, founder of Rescuers Without Borders.
“People generally suffocate on dust.”
Abdelqader Tarfay, the secretary general of Morocco’s National Health Union, said the biggest challenge for medics and rescue teams was still getting trapped people out.
“Then they have to work to remove the remaining bodies from under the rubble so they don’t rot,” he told Al Jazeera.
Houses, mosques and schools were decimated. A religious teacher in the village of Tafeghaghte said 22 of his students were killed.
Some residents of the hardest-hit mountainous areas criticized the government’s relief efforts, saying other communities had received help but were left to fend for themselves.
Hartattouch said it was understandable why some communities received government support and others did not, given the enormous scale of the destruction, which killed more than 2,800 people.
Remote villages around Ijoukak are still inaccessible, the Guardian reports, as “huge boulders block the roads.”
“The problem for the Atlas Mountains is that it is large… “It is not possible to help everyone.”
The 34-year-old was at work in Marrakesh when the 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck.
The moment the earth began to shake, he rushed to his family’s village in the High Atlas Mountains, more than 60 miles away, to be with his mother and two sisters.
Moroccan rescuers carry a body from the rubble in the village of Talat N’Yacoub in al-Haouz province
Said Hartattouch, 34, was at work in Marrakech when the magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck
Women react as they walk over the rubble of the village of Imoulas in Taroudant province
When he arrived a few hours later, his childhood home was in ruins.
Speaking in front of the rubble of the earth and straw house, Hartattouch said that in the days after the quake he sometimes felt like he was in a terrible dream.
“But then you wake up the next day and realize the reality,” he said.
While Hartattouch’s mother and sisters survived, fifteen other people from the close-knit community of about 100 people lost their lives.
Among them was his uncle, who was buried by a collapsing wall after escaping his home, and a close family friend who lived next door.
The village of Tinmel lies in a state of devastation. The houses were destroyed and the historic 12th century mosque, which stands at the end of the village and attracted tourists from all over the world, is now in ruins.
Hartattouch recounted his return to the village, which was delayed due to a road blocked by a landslide, and described a scramble in his destroyed family home to collect blankets and his mother’s insulin.
A Moroccan soldier comforts a man sitting on the ruins of a house in the mountainous region of Tizi N’Test
People wait as rescue workers open a road to their village in the mountainous Tizi N’Test region of Taroudant province
Family members hold a woman overcome with grief as her husband’s body is retrieved from beneath a collapsed house
An excavator digs through the rubble of collapsed buildings in Douz on September 11, 2023
Boxes of humanitarian aid have been prepared to be sent to quake-hit Morocco following the deadly earthquake
With nowhere to go, villagers have been sleeping outdoors since Friday’s earthquake.
Residents say the village has received little government aid and instead relies on charitable donations. A mother of a 15-day-old boy said the child needed formula and medication.
There is an urgent need for tents to protect people from the falling temperatures at night.
“It’s the beginning of the cold weather, the first day was very hard,” said Hartattouch.