According to the Interior Ministry, 2,012 people were killed, and 4,059 were injured after an earthquake of magnitude 6.8 hit Morocco.

Survivors of Morocco's deadliest earthquake in more than six decades huddled in the open on the High Atlas Mountains a day after the country's greatest quake in more than six decades killed over 2,000 people and destroyed towns.

PHOTO | COURTESY over 2000 killed in Morocco quake
Neighbors were still searching for survivors buried on the slopes, where mud brick, stone, and rough wood houses had been broken open, and mosque minarets had fallen by the late-Friday quake. Marrakech's ancient old city was also severely damaged.

Rescue workers sifted through rubble with their bare hands in the village of Amizmiz, near the epicenter. Broken masonry obstructed tiny streets. Around ten bodies were wrapped in blankets outside a hospital while weeping relatives waited nearby.

PHOTO | COURTESY earthquake aftermath

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"I rushed to get my kids out when I felt the earth shake beneath my feet and the house leaning." But my neighbors couldn't," Mohamed Azaw explained. "Unfortunately, no one in the family was discovered alive. The father and son were discovered dead, while the mother and daughter are still missing."

Rescuers stood atop the pancaked levels of one Amizmiz building, carpet and furniture jutting from the wreckage. As people sought supplies, a long queue formed outside the only open shop. Underlining rescuers' challenges, fallen boulders blocked a road from Amizmiz to a nearby village.

PHOTO | COURTESY Rescue workers


Almost all houses in Asni, about 40 km south of Marrakech, were damaged, and inhabitants were preparing to spend the night outside. According to villager Mohamed Ouhammo, food was in short supply because kitchen roofs had fallen.

Tansghart in the Ansi area, on the slope of a valley where the route from Marrakech rises up into the High Atlas, took the worst damage of any village Reuters saw. The heaving ground split up its once-pretty buildings clinging to a steep mountainside. Those that remained were missing sections of wall or plaster. Two minarets from mosques had collapsed.