INEGHEDE: Rescue teams stepped up on Wednesday a massive effort in devastated Moroccan mountain villages as chances fade for finding survivors from last week’s earthquake which killed 2,900 people and left many homeless.

Vehicles packed with supplies were inching up winding mountain roads to deliver desperately needed food and tents to survivors of the nation’s strongest quake on record and deadliest in more than six decades.

Smaller quakes are still rattling the disaster zone and one sent stones falling in the village of Imi N’Tala, where a person was injured following the jolt, journalists saw.

Search teams were still scouring the rubble for the living. Morocco is now well past the 72-hour window when rescues are considered most likely, yet survivors are in some cases found well beyond that period.

Vehicles packed with supplies to deliver much-needed food and tents

“We’re working in a lot of places,” said Fahas Abdullah Al Dosanri of the Qatari fire department, part of the international aid effort, adding some villages still cannot be reached by road.

Moroccan authorities reported that crews were working to clear unpaved tracks that have been cut off by landslides.

In the hardest-hit areas south of Marrakesh many villages in the High Atlas mountains were completely destroyed and locals were taking shelter in yellow government-issued tents.

“We just have the food donations, and we have some blankets, but no housing,” said 18-yead-old survivor Afrah Fouzia in the tiny mountain village of Tikht, which was so heavily damaged that it is now only rubble.

“Soon the rainy season will start, it will get colder and we’ll be completely destitute,” she said. “There are a lot of children here.” The tents in Tikht and elsewhere are an indication that aid is reaching some remote places but they are intended to be only temporary and will be totally insufficient once the weather turns.

Hard-hit mountain villages

Morocco is deep in mourning for its dead, with the most recent toll on Tuesday recording at least 2,901 killed and 5,530 injured in the 6.8-magnitude quake that struck late on Friday.

Helicopters are being used to evacuate the injured from remote places or those that cannot be reached by road, with media reports saying at least three people were airlifted to Marrakesh on Wednesday.

The toll is unlikely to be the final one, as crews are recovering bodies during their work, including one pulled from a collapsed home in the mountain village of Talat N’Yaqoub.

In the tourist hub of Marrakesh, whose Unesco-listed historic centre suffered cracks and other damage, many families still slept out in the open for a fifth night, huddled in blankets on public squares for fear of aftershocks.

Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2023