Around the town of Amizmiz, at the foot of the High Atlas, satellite images show that entire villages have been wiped off the map.
It was 11:11 p.m. when the earth started to shake on Friday, September 8. After the earthquake that shook Morocco last night, some Moroccan villages were transformed into fields of ruins. Four days later, the latest provisional report shows 2,863 dead and 2,562 injured, according to the Moroccan Interior Ministry. The epicenter of this 6.8 magnitude earthquake is located in the High Atlas massif, in the center of the country. In the surrounding area, dozens of villages such as Tafeghaghte, Sidi Hssaine and Tagheryouste have been completely wiped off the map.
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Satellite images from the company Maxar Technologies and the Airbus observation service, taken in May 2023, then after the disaster, make it possible to document the extent of the damage in the province of al-Haouz.
The village of Tafeghaghte, located around fifty kilometers from the epicenter, was almost completely destroyed by the earthquake. According to the BBC, 90 people lost their lives. This village, about ten kilometers from the town of Amizmiz, is one of the most devastated localities.
A little further west, very close to Tafeghaghte, the same spectacle of desolation in the village of Tagheryouste. These areas, located on the mountainside, make the work of rescuers particularly difficult. Many villages remain inaccessible due to landslides. To deliver food to earthquake survivors in certain small landlocked towns, helicopters make round trips.
Many villages were destroyed in the Atlas Mountains. This is the case of Sidi Hssaine, located only a few kilometers from Amizmiz. In this place at the foot of the Atlas, the flow of wounded from landlocked villages remains constant, according to AFP.
40 km further east, the authorities have installed a mobile clinic, prefabs placed in the dust, at the entrance to Ouirgane, a village of around 7,000 inhabitants, also ravaged by the earthquake. Six volunteers from the light intervention and rescue unit have been trying since the start of the week to find survivors in the rubble of the village.
Another military hospital and a Moroccan civil protection camp were also deployed between Monday and Tuesday in the village of Asni, an hour from Marrakech. At least 30 people lost their lives and more than 200 houses were destroyed or damaged, according to information from franceinfo.
Finally, in Imgdal, a village located on the mountainside, everything was destroyed in just a few seconds. Berber houses, made of mud bricks and straw, did not resist the earthquake that struck Morocco. The Grenoble association SOS Attitude flew to this village on Saturday afternoon, reports France 3 Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Access to the town has been partially blocked since the collapse of the road leading there.