Several countries have offered aid and search support after the Moroccan earthquake, but most of the rescue operation in remote mountain areas was being led by local teams and Rabat has not yet issued a broad demand for international aid.
After a powerful earthquake late on Friday night killed more than 2,000 people, Moroccan authorities this weekend made bilateral contact with certain countries whom they authorised to send expert search and rescue teams. These included Tunisia, who sent 50 paramedics and personnel from a specialised unit, as well as search dogs, advanced thermal monitoring devices, a drone to detect victims under the rubble and a field hospital. Qatar also sent a rescue team and medical crews.
Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, said on Sunday Madrid would also send search and rescue teams and aid, after a formal request for help from Morocco.
“It is a sign of Spanish solidarity and of the sense of friendship that unites the people of Spain with the people of Morocco,” Albares told Catalunya Radio, after receiving a call from his Moroccan counterpart. A Spanish military search and rescue team of 56 soldiers and four dogs was flown to Marrakech.
Neighbouring Algeria, which has had difficult relations with Morocco, opened its airspace, which had been closed for two years, to flights carrying humanitarian aid and the injured.
Other countries said specialist search and rescue teams were ready if Morocco called on them, including Turkey, the US and Taiwan.
Callout
French authorities said they were ready to help Morocco but would wait for a formal request for assistance.
“France is ready to offer its aid to Morocco if Morocco decides it is useful,” President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday during a news conference at the G20 summit in New Delhi.
“Moroccan authorities know exactly what can be delivered, the nature [of what can be delivered] and the timing ... We are at their disposal. We did everything we could do ... The second they request this aid, it will be deployed,” he said.
The French foreign ministry spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre told French TV: “Our embassy in Morocco is fully mobilised…. Today, Moroccan authorities are in charge ... An assessment [of the situation] is under way.”
Sylvie Brunel, a geography professor who has worked for the NGO Action Against Hunger, told Le Figaro: “As an emerging country, which sees itself as an interlocutor with Europe and who aspires to a status of regional power in Africa, Rabat wants to show it is sovereign, capable of piloting its own search and rescue, and not behave as if it is a poor wounded country that the whole world wants to charitably save.”
She said that due to the remote mountain areas affected by the earthquake, the key emergency rescue work would depend on local Moroccan teams in the first 48 hours.
In France, where there are large numbers of dual French-Moroccan citizens, as well as many Moroccan students and residents, several regional authorities announced they would make humanitarian aid available and, at a later point, aid for rebuilding.
Regional leaders in Occitanie, Corsica and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, in the south of France, said in a joint statement that they would make €1m (£860,000) available. They said their regions “had strong Mediterranean links” and offered their support.
