President Biden said in a statement on Saturday morning that his administration was in contact with Moroccan officials and offered help. The French Embassy in Morocco opened a crisis hotline and the mayor of the southern French port city of Marseille said that he would send firefighters to help with rescue efforts in Marrakesh, a sister city. A long-running drought has sapped agricultural livelihoods, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent the price of imported wheat and other key goods soaring.īefore the pandemic, the tourism industry alone accounted for more than 7 percent of gross domestic product and 565,000 jobs in a country of about 37 million people, much of it concentrated in Marrakesh and the surrounding region, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.Ĭountries from Algeria to Israel to Taiwan were quick to offer help.įrance, a former colonial power in Morocco, was one of the first to do so. Like many of its neighbors in the Middle East and North Africa, Morocco has suffered several blows over the last few years, starting with the coronavirus pandemic, which put the country’s vital tourism industry on ice.

The more pressing issue for most Moroccans is the economy. Still, there have been few, if any, public hints in Morocco of the kind of political instability that has rocked other parts of Africa and the Middle East recently. His cabinet, which appears to run the day-to-day affairs of state, rarely informs Moroccan citizens about his whereabouts unless announcing his attendance at an official event. The king’s whereabouts when the quake hit were not immediately clear, but he is frequently absent from the country without explanation. The Moroccan Army said the air force was evacuating casualties from the hard-hit Haouz province to a military hospital in Marrakesh. When he did speak, he did not address the public but issued a brief statement noting that he had instructed the country’s armed forces to contribute to the rescue efforts. There was no word on the disaster from Morocco’s leader, King Mohammed VI, for more than 12 hours after the quake struck. Omar Farkhani, the former president of the Moroccan National Order of Architects, said that in such areas, the residents are often too poor to pay architects and end up building their houses themselves or with the help of low-skilled workers. Moroccan architects say the area near the epicenter has many earthen houses that are not built to withstand an earthquake of this strength. “Many families are trapped under the rubble of their homes, and damage to parts of Marrakesh’s Medina, a UNESCO World Heritage Site have also been reported,” the statement said. The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement that more than 300,000 civilians in Marrakesh and its outskirts had been affected by the earthquake.

According to early breakdowns of casualties by provinces, the death toll was especially heavy in the rural Haouz region southeast of Marrakesh, which includes parts of the High Atlas Mountains. But it was clear that the scope of the catastrophe was extensive, with the rural provinces outside of Marrakesh the hardest hit. The contours of the damage were also still taking shape on Saturday. agency said local estimates can often be more accurate, but initial readings of magnitude are measured automatically and need to be reviewed by seismologists. That would make it more than twice as large, according to the logarithmic scale on which earthquakes are measured. Geological Survey estimated its magnitude at 6.8, but the Moroccan geological institute put it at 7.2. The precise size of the quake was not yet clear.

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