Report: Rioting in quake town
 |
Locals scramble for blankets as they arrive in the village of Imzouren.
Story Tools
VIDEO
|
Emergency workers search for survivors of Moroccan earthquake.
|
MAGNITUDE GUIDE
|
|
Below is an interactive guide to earthquake magnitude and severity:
|
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS
|
Follow the news that matters to you. Create your own alert to be notified on topics you're interested in.
Or, visit Popular Alerts for suggestions.
|
|
AL HOCEIMA, Morocco -- Several people were hurt when the Moroccan military broke up a demonstration by protesters angry over the government response to the country's deadly earthquake, a local official said.
"There are clashes right now as we speak," the official who witnessed Thursday's violence involving about 1,500 people in the Mediterranean port of Al Hoceima told Reuters.
"Several people have been wounded," he said after the crowd, angered at what they saw as an inadequate government response to Tuesday's quake, attacked the governor's offices.
Earlier as hopes dimmed of finding more survivors in the rubble of mud-brick homes in villages surrounding Al Hoceima, dozens of demonstrators staged a sit-down protest on the road linking the Mediterranean port to the interior, interrupting all traffic.
The official death toll from Tuesday's quake rose to 571 Thursday.
CNN's Al Goodman reported that tens of thousands of Moroccans have been camping outside overnight, fearful of more tremors -- even people whose homes are earthquake-proof.
Moroccan newspapers said the remote terrain and poor weather were hampering the rescue operation. But foreign aid workers said they had been sent away by officials "too busy" to help them locate possible survivors still trapped under the rubble.
"One 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," Austrian search and rescue team member Wolfgang Wedan told Reuters.
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.
Eliane Provo Kluit, of the U.N. Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team at Al Hoceima airport, said teams needed the government to tell them where to operate, but added: "There has been no identification of sites where rescue is needed."
As early as Wednesday, villagers made homeless by the tremor measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale had staged a sit-down protest on the main road linking the Mediterranean port to the interior, complaining promised aid had failed to materialize.
At Al Hoceima airport, an angry crowd of about 100 people blocked trucks containing mattresses and blankets. "It's our stuff!" they shouted at soldiers trying to prevent them from helping themselves.
"I'm not coming down. I've lost my father and my grandfather in the earthquake. I don't want my family to die of cold," shouted one man.
Sahel defended the government's handling of the crisis, saying it was distributing 1,300 tents and creating two temporary camps in the village of Ait Kamara and in Al Hoceima.
The armed forces would set up three other camps of up to 400 tents equipped with electricity and drinking water, MAP quoted the interior minister as saying.
Concern remains over the fate of three villages in the Rif Mountains -- Ait Kamara, Tamassint and Im-Zouren -- where 30,000 people live mainly in mud houses.
Officials expected the toll to climb further and special prayers will be said in the country's mosques on Friday, which has been declared a national day of mourning.
The quake was North Africa's worst since 2,300 people were killed last May in neighboring Algeria. Morocco's worst recorded quake killed 12,000 in the city of Agadir in 1960.
