AL HOCEIMA, Morocco, 27 February 2004 — Several people were hurt when troops quelled crowds attacking a Moroccan governor’s offices yesterday, angry at what they called inadequate official aid in the aftermath of Tuesday’s earthquake. “There are clashes right now as we speak,” said a local official who witnessed the violence involving about 1,500 people in this Mediterranean port.
“Several people have been wounded,” said the official, who asked not to be identified. Shortly afterward, a Reuters correspondent in a nearby village saw trucks carrying anti-riot forces heading for Al Hoceima.
The official said the military’s “violent intervention” began when the crowd started looting relief trucks of supplies for the tens of thousands of people made homeless by Morocco’s worst quake in four decades.
Anger at the perceived slowness of the official response has been mounting since Wednesday, when some survivors blocked a main road in a sit-down protest.
Aid has been pouring in from countries cross the world since Wednesday. Saudi Arabia sent a plane filled with tents, blankets and rugs, the Saudi Press Agency said. “On the orders of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, a plane left Riyadh Airport today to provide aid to the victims of the earthquakes,” it said. The agency said another plane carrying electric generators was expected to leave today.
Moroccan Interior Minister Mustapha Sahel said earlier the official death toll from the quake had risen to 571. A five-year-old boy was dug out alive after two days spent under the wreckage of his home, but some foreign rescue workers said they had been left standing idle.
“The senior official in (Ait Kamara) told us 200 people died in the village and that two or three were still alive under the rubble, but that he was too busy to show us where they were,” said Austrian search and rescue team member Wolfgang Wedan.
In another village, Tazagin, his team were told they were 24 hours too late: “We have come here for nothing. We wanted to help but we can’t. They send us away wherever we go,” he said.
“There has been no identification of sites where rescue is needed,” said Eliane Provo Kluit, of the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team.
