A powerful earthquake that occurred in Morocco has killed over 800 people and injured many. The earthquake destroyed buildings and sent residents of major cities rushing out of their homes in the country’s deadliest tremor in over six decades.
The magnitude 7.2 quake happened in Morocco’s High Atlas mountains and according to the country’s Interior Ministry 820 people had been killed and another 672 injured. A local official revealed that most deaths were in mountain areas that were hard to reach.
In Marrakech, the closest big city to the epicentre, residents spent the night in the open as they afraid to go home.
Miloud Skrout, a resident, said: “Everything is by God’s will, but we sustained great harm.”
Many people, mostly relatives of the injured who came from mountainous areas outside Marrakech, waited outside a local hospital.
While talking about how desperate the scenes were as people ran for safety, Jaouhari Mohammed, a resident of Marrakech said: “I still can’t sleep in the house because of the shock and also because the old town is made up of old houses.
“If one falls, it will cause others to collapse.”
The Interior Ministry asked for calm, saying in a televised statement that the quake hit the Provinces of Al Haouz, Ouarzazate, Marrakech, Azilal, Chichaoua, and Taroudant.
Morocco’s geophysical centre revealed that the quake struck just after 11 p.m. (2200 GMT) in the Ighil area of the High Atlas.
According to the United States Geological Survey, it was Morocco’s deadliest since 1960 when a tremor was estimated to have killed at least 12,000 people.
Ighil, a mountainous area with small farming villages, is about 70 km (40 miles) southwest of Marrakech.
Spanish television RTVE reported tremors from the earthquake were felt in Huelva and Jaen in Andalusia, southern Spain.
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