The United Nations is in contact with Moroccan authorities and is “ready to provide assistance” to the country, which was hit by an earthquake last Friday that left more than 2,800 dead, a UN source told Lusa.
“We remain in contact with the authorities and stand ready to provide assistance,” said a United Nations (UN) source in Rabat.
The UN has sent a “small team” from the Disaster Assessment and Coordination Unit to Morocco to monitor the situation and has been “in contact with the government from the first moment,” another source from the organization told Lusa .
The preliminary balance of the earthquake that struck Morocco on Friday evening increased the number of deaths to 2,862 and the number of injured to 2,562, the Moroccan Interior Ministry announced on Monday.
The consequences of the earthquake caused deaths in a dozen provinces, but the most affected are Al Haouz, south of Marrakesh and close to the epicenter, with 1,604 deaths, followed by Taroudant (976 deaths).
The earthquake’s epicenter is in a mountainous area of the High Atlas, where landslides are making access to affected villages such as the town of Ighil difficult.
So far, Morocco has accepted help from four countries to send search and rescue teams: Spain, the United Kingdom, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Portugal has also expressed its willingness to send support.
The earthquake, whose epicenter was recorded in the town of Ighil, 63 kilometers southwest of the city of Marrakech, was felt in Portugal and Spain and reached a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale, according to the National Institute of Geophysics of Marrakech. – the United States Geological Survey recorded a magnitude of 6.8.
This earthquake is the deadliest in Morocco since the earthquake that devastated Agadir, on the country’s west coast, on February 29, 1960, killing between 12,000 and 15,000, a third of the city’s population.
Source: DN
