Morocco earthquake – live: Race to find survivors as death toll tops 2,901

Two British tourists slept on the streets of a village in the Atlas mountains – unable to contact their families following a devastating earthquake in Morocco, one of their husbands has said.

Rebecca Calvert, 63, and friend Hilary Mckegney, 64, had just arrived in the remote village of Imlil in the Atlas Mountains to go on a hiking trip when the earthquake struck.

The magnitude 6.8 tremor late on Friday damaged buildings from villages in the Atlas Mountains to the historic city of Marrakesh.

The official death toll from the earthquake was more than 2,800 people by Sunday evening.

A powerful earthquake interrupted a wedding in Morocco on Friday, 8 September.

Footage from Marrakech shows musicians abandoning the stage and fleeing through a doorway as people scream.

More than 2,000 people have died after the earthquake struck late on Friday and thousands have spent three nights sleeping in the streets following the disaster.

The UK is set to send 60 search and rescue specialists and four search dogs to Morocco.

Damage could take several years to repair, according to the Red Cross.

Rescuers face a race against time to find survivors of the deadly earthquake in Morocco, with international search and rescue personnel arriving to help the search almost 72 hours after the disaster.

The earthquake, Morocco’s deadliest in more than six decades, has claimed the lives of nearly 2,700 people and a similar number of wounded, many of them seriously.

Search teams from Britain, Spain and Qatar have joined efforts to find people buried under the rubble, including in some of the remote villages in the High Atlas mountains close to the epicentre of the quake.

“The level of destruction is... absolute,” said Spanish rescuer Antonio Nogales. “Not a single house has stayed upright.”

“We’re going to start our search with dogs and see whether we can find anyone alive,” he said in video footage he filmed in the village of Imi N’Tala, about 45 miles (72km) from Marrakech.

The British man who has done more than anyone else to build tourism in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains says he is “lucky to be alive” after he was caught up in Friday’s catastrophic earthquake.

But some students attending the schools in the area he helped to establish have died.

Mike McHugo is a visionary entrepreneur who transformed an ancient fort 60km south of Marrakech into a sought-after eco-lodge known as the Kasbah du Toubkal. It is located in the foothills of North Africa’s highest mountain, Toubkal, above the village of Imlil.

He was in bed in the property at 11.11pm on Friday when the earthquake struck.

“I was woken up and I knew instantly it was an earthquake. I was in a room with my brother and I knew we couldn’t get out because we’re in a downstairs bedroom and stuff was falling around. I just told him to get under the bed or close to the bed.

The death toll is rising following a catastrophic earthquake in Morocco late at night on Friday 8 September. More than 2,800 people have been killed and injured after the 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck.

The epicentre was about 70km (43 miles) southwest of Marrakech – the fourth-biggest city in Morocco, and by far the most popular draw for international visitors.

Thousands of British holidaymakers are in the area, with many thousands more booked to go there during September. This is the travel picture:

One of the survivors, Hicham Ahazar who lives in Asni recounted the moment the earthquake hit.

He told CNN that he grabbed his sister and rushed outside. “I grabbed her and we ran outside. And as soon as we got outside, a whole wall collapsed.”

It was during this escape that he ended up hurting his own leg. “I looked at my leg later and I saw there was a lot of blood. But I almost didn’t notice it. It was crazy.”

It was days later when he received some help and saw a medical professional who cleaned up his wound and bandaged his leg properly.

Spanish firefighters were among the first professional teams to reach the devastated community up in the village of Algou, high in the Atlas Mountains.

“There is nothing we can do here,” Juan Lopez, a Spanish firefighter responding to the earthquake in Morocco, told BBC News.

“Here in Morocco, the houses are built from rocks. In Turkey they were made with steel and are much more strong,” Mr Lopez said. He also went to Turkey during the devastating earthquake there.

“We won’t find anyone here.”

Up in the Ighil District in the Atlas Mountains, the speed of rescue operations has been criticised, Sky News reported.

The region is remote and rescuers are racing against time to find survivors.

One unidentified woman was quoted as saying that the villagers could hear screams from under the rubble but nobody came to help.

The villagers in the remote part of Morocco did what they could without the right equipment. The woman said that those under the rubble could have survived had help arrived on time.

“My house fell down, gone, it collapsed on me and my family, I rescued my two daughters and their mother, but I lost my other two children, and I have no furniture, nothing left,” a man said.

Nearly 100,000 children have been impacted by the devastating earthquake in Morocco, according to UNICEF.

The agency said that it doesn’t know the exact number of children killed or injured but “the latest estimates from 2022 indicate that children represent almost a third of the population in Morocco”.

“Thousands of homes have been destroyed, displacing families, and exposing them to the elements at a time of year when temperatures drop down during the nighttime. Schools, hospitals and other medical and educational facilities have been damaged or destroyed by the quakes, further impacting children,” UNICEF said in a statement.

The agency said it has “already mobilised humanitarian staff to support the immediate response on the ground, which is being led by the Kingdom of Morocco”.

The Morocco earthquake that has killed more than 2,000 people was the strongest to hit the north African nation in several decades.

The earthquake struck just after 11pm on Friday and has impacted the entire region, with tremors being felt thousands of miles away in Portugal and Algeria.

The quake’s epicentre is in the middle of the country and located at the High Atlas Mountains in the Ighil area, about 40 miles (70km) south of Marrakech.

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