2023-09-13 09:48:42
While the earthquake which shook Morocco on the night of September 8 to 9 caused more than 2,900 deaths, according to the latest report, five days following the tragedy, the situation remains particularly alarming in many villages in High Atlas, pulverized by the violence of the earthquake, the deadliest that Morocco has experienced in more than 60 years.
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It was one of the most beautiful Berber villages in the region. Today it is a field of ruins. A 1.5 hour drive from Marrakech, Toulkine, perched at an altitude of 1,800 meters, was completely destroyed, wiped off the map by the violence of the earthquake.
“Here, no house withstood the shock,” describes Tarek Kai, France 24’s special correspondent in Morocco. “All of them are cracked and many of them have collapsed. They are modest terracotta houses whose walls or ceilings have fallen on the inhabitants.”
Like several villages devastated by the disaster, the small town mainly had buildings built in the traditional way using a mixture of stone, wood and mud mortar.
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Although several victims have been reported in Toulkine, miracles have nevertheless taken place, reports Tarek Kai. Like this father who managed to “extract his children from the rubble, including a one and a half year old infant”.
Humanitarian aid in trickles
Since the earthquake, survivors have been forced to sleep outside. An increasingly worrying situation as the first snow might fall as early as October.
In the meantime, residents must make do with humanitarian aid which arrives in trickles in this difficult-to-access region. “Aid relies mainly on volunteers and humanitarian associations,” explains the France 24 special correspondent.
And Toulkine’s situation is far from isolated. Many localities located in the foothills of the High Atlas were completely destroyed by the earthquake.
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The village of Tikht, once home to at least 100 families, is now a tangle of wood, masonry debris, broken plates, shoes and intricately patterned carpets.
“Life is over here,” complains to AFP Mohssin Aksoum, 33, part of whose family lives in this small village. “The village is dead.”
In this deprived region where daily life was already hard, the inhabitants lost what little they had, in particular livestock, the only wealth of many villagers.
In addition to the challenge of rehousing the victims, there is the challenge of educating around 100,000 students deprived of lessons. According to the Moroccan Ministry of Education, 530 establishments and 55 boarding schools were destroyed or damaged during the earthquake.
An uncertain future
For the survivors, life is now written on dotted lines. The tent camps that begin to appear near destroyed or heavily damaged homes show that help is coming, but leave survivors uncertain regarding their fate.
This aid nevertheless represents progress for residents like Fatima Oumalloul, whose face still bears traces of blood.
“I just want a home, a dignified place for a human being,” the 59-year-old woman said as soldiers distributed the tents in Amizmiz, a town regarding an hour southwest of Marrakech that has become a help center for residents of villages in the High Atlas.
15 km to the south, in the mountains, tents were transported on Tuesday September 12 to the devastated village of Ineghede where residents set them up and took some goods.
“I don’t want to sleep in a tent. I feel like I’m on the street,” exclaims Latifah, a 24-year-old mother. Her husband, Mohammed Amaddah, 33, set up theirs on a dusty plot next to his damaged house.
Latifah watches him do it without much enthusiasm. “I feel like my heart is broken. I’m afraid of the future, it’s so uncertain.”
With AFP
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