The Spanish rescuers displaced to the area of Morocco affected by the devastating earthquake last Friday began their return to Spain without hope of finding survivors, reported sources from the NGO United Firefighters Without Borders (BUSF).
“Most of the groups (of rescuers) are no longer doing anything (…) We returned tonight. With the certainty that no living people will appear, our work is finished,” explained Antonio Nogales, one of the BUSF volunteers.
Other Spanish body rescue or health care teams are still in the Atlas Mountains affected by the earthquake, the NGO said on social networks.
The NGO United Firefighters Without Borders has traveled to one of the most remote areas of the province of Marrakech, where they have found a “level of absolute destruction” after the earthquake
💬 “There is no house left standing. We are going to start the hunt with the dogs… pic.twitter.com/srE3QAHmvM
— laSexta (@laSextaTV) September 11, 2023
Annika Coll, head of ERICAM (Emergency and Immediate Response of the Community of Madrid), which is in Talat N’Yakoub, a town that is very difficult to access due to the poor state of the roads, said that they did an evaluation of the town to see in which buildings, “which are practically all collapsed, there was a greater possibility of finding living people.”
Then, coordinated with the two Moroccan search and rescue teams operating in the town, they are working together, and have collaborated in extracting bodies.
Mohammed VI visits disaster zone
While, The King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, visited the region affected by the earthquake in which more than 2,900 people were killed.
According to the MAP news agency, the 60-year-old monarch donated blood on Tuesday at a hospital in the western city of Marrakech, about 70 kilometers from the epicenter of the earthquake but did not escape damage.
The Jewish quarter of Marrakech’s medina was severely affected and visitors to Morocco’s main tourist attraction now find entire families living on the streets.
— José Manuel Albares (@jmalbares) September 12, 2023
The earthquake also damaged parts of the walls surrounding Marrakech’s old city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built in the 12th century.
Morocco’s Interior Ministry said Tuesday that most of the dead have already been buried and that some 5,530 people were injured.
Morocco accepted offers of support made by Spain, Qatar, Great Britain and the United Arab Emirates, adding that it could later accept offers made by other countries.
The earthquake, one of the worst that the country has suffered in the last centuryhit the three southern regions of Marrakech-Safi, Souss-Massa and Draa-Tafilalet, where there were the highest numbers of deaths and injuries, and hit the regions of Beni Mellal and Casablanca to a lesser extent.
Keep reading:
- Why an earthquake as powerful as the one it just suffered is unusual in Morocco
- The death toll in the powerful earthquake in Morocco increased to more than 2,000
- The images of destruction left by the devastating earthquake in Morocco