Morocco earthquake latest: UK team deployed to assist rescue – as CCTV shows moment earthquake struck

“Immediately, I went to social media and posted something on Facebook.

“But at that moment we didn’t realise the scope of the earthquake, it was only after an hour we started seeing on social media people sharing videos of people affected.

“At that moment, we started realising the earthquake was very strong.

“Especially when we heard it was a magnitude 7, the anxiety and fear started to settle in the minds of all Moroccans.”

He adds: “We are just hoping the death toll will not rise dramatically and that the Moroccan authorities will succeed in their operations to rescue as many people as possible and minimise the impacts of this earthquake of those affected.”

UK trade minister Kemi Badenoch says she thinks the government should be doing “as much as we can” to support Morocco.

Speaking to Sky News, she says: “I think the first thing I should say is to express my condolences to the people of Morocco, for what is an awful, awful tragedy, and I know the foreign secretary is working hard with his counterpart in Morocco.

“I do think we should be doing as much as we can in order to support the people of Morocco, and I will look at what I can do myself as business and trade secretary in order to support.”

Mark Scorer has seen the aftermath of several earthquakes.

He is an engineer and rescue operations manager with SARAID – Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters.

“We’re now well into the golden period, where the chance of finding people alive is decreasing,” he tells Sky News.

He says rescuers will be looking for buildings with “survivable voids”, where the collapse has left pockets where people may be trapped.

You can read more of Mark’s assessment of the situation in Morocco in the link below.

Stuart Ramsay, our chief correspondent, is in the town of Talat Nyakoub, near to the epicentre of the earthquake.

He says rescuers, including a team from Spain, have arrived in the town – to the southwest of the capital Marrakech.

He says: “In this particular location, I don’t think there is an awful lot of hope.

“In some of the places here they have some people out, but such was the way that this earthquake hit, it was so quick that a lot of people, if they were indoors they just didn’t get out.

“A lot more resources have arrived – because there has been criticism about the lack of action here.

“Getting here is difficult, because as soon as there is traffic on the mountain roads, many of them have been cleared, but they are really dangerous still.”

He adds: “The numbers of dead is going to rise, I’d say for certain.”

The RAF has shared images of the UK rescue team loading up their equipment into two A400M Atlas at RAF Brize Norton, in Oxfordshire.

The UK has deployed 60 search and rescue specialists to assist the country’s efforts to find survivors.

Grant Shapps, the newly appointed defence secretary, has described the earthquake as a “devastating time for the people of Morocco”.

New satellite images from Morocco show collapsed buildings in the town of Amizmiz – near to the epicentre of the earthquake.

In the same images, bright yellow aid tents can be seen, with the rescue operation under way.

Other satellite images show the arrival of helicopters in the nearby town of Talat N’Yaaqoub and blue aid tents in Asni.

More here on the rush to send international aid to Morocco, with US secretary of state Antony Blinken saying in a post on X – formerly known as Twitter – that America “stands ready” to support the country’s leadership.

So far, Morocco has accepted assistance from Spain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, but several other counties have offered to help.

The UK has deployed 60 search and rescue specialists to assist the country’s efforts to find survivors.

They have specialist search equipment including seismic listening devices, concrete cutting and breaking equipment, propping and shoring tools, which gives the team the capacity to lift, cut and remove concrete and rubble to reach people under collapsed buildings.

Welcome back to our live coverage of the earthquake in Morocco.

If you are just joining us, here’s what you need to know.

• A 6.8 magnitude quake struck high in the Atlas Mountains south of Marrakech at just after 11pm on Friday;

• At least 2,122 people have been confirmed dead and a further 2,421 have been injured;
• It was the deadliest earthquake to strike the country since 2004, with rural remote towns among the hardest hit;
• Buildings and vehicles have been destroyed and badly damaged in the historic city of Marrakech;
• On Saturday, the country declared three days of mourning to remember the victims;
• So far, Morocco has only asked for assistance from four countries – the UK, Spain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates;
• The UK has deployed 60 search and rescue specialists to assist the country’s efforts to find survivors;
• Meanwhile, the director of the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre told Sky News the nation will continue to be rocked by aftershocks – and they could last months.

Morocco national football players have visited a medical centre in Agadir city to donate blood for earthquake victims.

Head coach Walid Regragui’s qualifying game for the African Cup of Nations was postponed on Saturday in the wake of the disaster.

Morocco had been scheduled to play Liberia in Agadir on the country’s western coast, but the Moroccan soccer federation said the game had been postponed indefinitely.

Morocco and Bayern Munich defender Noussair Mazraoui said: “When we heard that blood donation is needed, we wanted to help with whatever we can.

“If it was blood what they need, we will donate blood. And, if they need more than that, we will help more.”

Aerial footage has revealed the widespread destruction caused by Friday’s earthquake.

The disaster has killed more than 2,100 people – a number that is expected to rise.

An aftershock rattled Moroccans earlier today as they mourned victims of the nation’s strongest earthquake in more than a century and sought to rescue survivors.

The United Nations has estimated 300,000 people were affected by the quake.

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI has thanked countries for sending teams and aid in the aftermath of the earthquake.

He thanked Spain, Qatar, the UK and the UAE for their assistance, according to state TV.

Morocco assessed aid needs and considered the importance of coordinating relief effort before accepting help from the four countries, it added.

We’ve been hearing a lot of stories from survivors of the earthquake about what they were doing when it struck.

More than 2,000 people have died since the disaster hit on Friday, and a further 2,421 have been injured.

Among the dead is a young boy named Marouane ben Henna, who was killed while having dinner with his family.

His father, Hamid ben Henna, had asked him to fetch a knife to cut a melon when he ground started to shake.

“That’s when it struck,” Mr ben Henna told Reuters.

He described how the room began to shake, the lights went out and rubble started falling from the ceiling of their traditional house in a remote village of the High Atlas mountains.

Along with his other son, Mr ben Henna staggered out of the open door into the alleyway as their house began to collapse.

They managed to free his wife Amina and small daughter Meryem.

But as the dust settled they saw that Marouane had not made it. His body was only recovered the next day, after his uncles arrived by car from Casablanca, five hours away, to help lift the rubble.

As darkness falls, rescuers are continuing to search for survivors in Amizmiz.

The rural town at the foothills of the Atlas Mountains in the south of Morocco has seen huge amounts of destruction due to the earthquake.

Earlier today, a local paramedic predicted 2,000 could have died there.

Fo Jane Felix-Richards, the first signs of the earthquake came while she was sat in a hotel lobby having a drink with her family.

Staying just 20 minutes away from Marrakech’s main square, she said she heard a “deep rumble” that quickly became “incredibly loud”.

“It’s something I’ll never forget. The building started to shake violently,” she told Sky News.

“Chandeliers were swinging, plaster coming from the walls and glasses smashing.

“I thought a bomb had gone off and the roof was about to cave in. I shouted at the family to run and we raced to the doors leading to the pool.”

Despite the “utterly terrifying experience”, Ms Felix-Richards was able to return to the hotel with her family, with the building experiencing minimal damage.

“There are cracks in the walls, plaster is missing and there was smashed glass,” she added.

“We feel incredibly lucky yet uncomfortable being here, knowing of the devastation so close. We felt tremors this morning around 9am, so we’re all still hyper alert.”

One of the towns devastated by the earthquake was Amizmiz in the south of Morocco.

Locals were woken up late on Friday night as the quake rocked the ground beneath them and caused buildings to collapse.

One of those was Martin Jay, who said he was awoken by the vibration on the bedroom floor and the wall shaking.

“It was pretty terrifying. Within one second I realised we had to get out of the house as quickly as possible,” he told Sky News.

“As we scrambled across the room an internal brick wall collapsed, which made it even more dramatic and completely surreal,” the Maghrebi.org editor added.

He said the town, which is in a remote area in the mountains, has turned into a “freak show” since the quake.

“It’s horror movie. You can’t really take it all in,” he added.

“Every now and again you see houses completely collapsed and you know people that were in them.

“There are some people sleeping in front of their houses… they’re just too afraid to go back in.”

In the town Moulay Brahim, rescuers have pulled a survivor from the rubble.

Teams have been working to reach hard-hit remote areas since Friday night when the 6.8 magnitude earthquake hit.

More than 2,100 people have been killed and a further 2,421 have been injured.

By Stuart Ramsey, chief correspondent in Talat Nyakoub

The large rotary blades of a military helicopter fire up, lifting emergency supplies towards villages otherwise cut off from the world.

They’re also shuttling the injured and dead away from the epicentre.

An enormous cloud of dust engulfs dozens of survivors and emergency teams who have descended on the town of Talat Nyakoub, at the epicentre of the earthquake, to dig for the living and recover the dead.

There is hope that loved ones didn’t die when the quake hit the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, but the smell of dead bodies is at times overpowering and the grim faces of rescue workers speak volumes.

Dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people gather at a newly formed roads created when the street below disintegrated.

Beneath them groups of rescue workers operating in teams of six to 12 dig their way through the rubble.

There is little chatter, the sounds of drills and pickaxes fill the air.  The occasional sound of somebody wailing punctuates the near silence. A sad indicator that another body has been found.

This is a desperate race to save lives but as each hour passes here, hope fades.

Rescue workers say finding survivors is difficult, not only because of the heat, but because of the amount of time that has passed since the earthquake struck – and the severity of its impact.

Whole streets have been utterly destroyed in what survivors say was more like an enormous explosion than the shaking of an earthquake.

They described how the ground and buildings blew upwards from the earth before collapsing. Multi-storey buildings are now pancaked.

Air Said Mohamed says he rescued three people here, and 10 in another village, before rescue workers get here.

“Sometimes you find someone alive, sometimes not, they have already died… but there is hope, I rescued three people here and 10 in the other village above.”

In the blistering heat rescuers dig through the rubble looking for survivors, but in all honesty, they’re expecting to find the dead.

While we filmed, we saw many dead – but we saw no survivors.

When a body is found, it is extracted from the rubble, wrapped in a blanket, and placed on an orange stretcher.

Recovery teams then take the body to a dusty car park that has become the main gathering point for the relief effort.

They’re usually followed by the family, almost all in tears.

We watched as the body of 18-year-old Heba was recovered and placed on the ground in the car park.

She was only visiting her family here – Heba was a student living in Marrakech.

Her family survived, she did not.  Her mother and father cried and hugged, while their relatives tried to support them. They were inconsolable.

You see this scene time and again at the epicentre.

I met Fatima standing on the ridge watching relief efforts. She has lost 10 members of her family already and told me others are still missing.

“The rescue workers are doing a really good job but look at everything they have to dig through – concrete, sand rocks… it’s very difficult,” Fatima said.

She has given up hope of anyone still being alive.

“Within seconds everything fell down, some people managed to run out of their houses, others didn’t make it.”

Although most of the rescue work is done by hand, the rescue teams occasionally use drills powered by generators to break through the exposed floors and ceilings of the buildings – it’s hard to differentiate between the two.

Youssef Id Mesouad was here when the body of his mother was removed from the family home.

He’s returned with his uncle and cousins to wait for the relief teams to find the body of his father.

He stands with them on top of the house, now a pile of rubble, gesturing and explaining the layout of the house.

Youssef knows there is no hope left for his father.  He told me his mother’s body was found near the ceiling of the house, not underneath it.

Throughout the day the bodies of the newly recovered were laid in a row in the car park. Their families sitting beside them, waiting to take them away.

Youssef knows his father will be one of them, he’s just waiting for him to be found.

Another death to add to thousands we already know about.

Source:Sky News