IMZOUREN, Feb 24: At least 300 people were feared dead after a powerful earthquake rocked northeastern Morocco on Tuesday, leaving hospitals struggling to cope with a flood of injured amid a desperate search for survivors.
The official Moroccan news agency MAP's latest provisional toll stood at 229, with 120 injured, in the pre-dawn quake in Al Hoceima province. But a local official reached in the town of Imzouren estimated that at least 300 people were killed, adding about 40 houses were "entirely destroyed" as residents were sleeping when the quake struck at 2:27am (0227 GMT).
Search and rescue teams were finding more victims as they reached many small villages in the remote mountainous Mediterranean region, he said, as an AFP journalist saw scenes of devastation on arriving at Imzouren, some 10km south of Al Hoceima port.
Rescue teams rushed to the scene after the quake, which was felt as far away as parts of southern Spain and estimated at 6.3 on the Richter scale by the seismic officials in the French city of Strasbourg.
Morocco's King Mohammed VI was in the region late Tuesday to visit the quake-hit site "to be close to his subjects and to follow the rescue operations", MAP agency said.
Many shocked and injured people had flooded into Al Hoceima in a state of "total panic", Dr Mohammed Lacghar told AFP by telephone, saying he had "never seen anything like it" in the clinic he ran in the town.
Local officials said hundreds of injured were coming to the port of 100,000 residents, which seemed to have escaped damage from the quake. One hospital in Al Hoceima was overflowing and the injured were being evacuated to a local army barracks and to a charity home, Mohamed Boudra, head of the local council, said.
Armed forces joined the royal gendarmerie, or paramilitary police, as well as local rescue services in the search, MAP said. Helicopters were also flying in large supplies of search and rescue equipment, MAP said.
"We recorded hundreds of aftershocks of this earthquake, a lot weaker than the initial tremor," Jabbour Nasser of the Moroccan Geophysical Laboratory said on television.
The Mohammed V Foundation provided two planes and a medical team as well as ambulances, medicines and equipment including blankets and 20 tons of food, officials said. -AFP