At least 22 people have been killed and 16 others injured after two buildings collapsed in the Moroccan city of Fez, Reuters reports.
The adjacent buildings, located in one of Morocco’s oldest cities, collapsed on Wednesday, the Fez prosecutor’s office said.
One of the structures was unoccupied, while the other was hosting an Aqiqah, a traditional Muslim ceremony marking the birth of a child.
The prosecutor noted that the reported death toll was preliminary and that an investigation had been launched.
Authorities said eight families lived in the building where the celebration was taking place.
Footage aired by state-owned SNRT News showed rescue workers and local residents digging through the rubble.
“My son who lives upstairs told me the building is coming down. When we went out, we saw the building collapsing,” an elderly woman, wrapped in a blanket, told the broadcaster.
Witnesses reported that the buildings in the Al-Mustaqbal neighborhood, a densely populated area in the western part of the city, had shown signs of cracking for some time.
Local officials announced that, in addition to the judicial probe, technical and administrative investigations had begun to determine the cause of the collapse. The buildings were constructed in 2006 under a government scheme that enabled residents of shantytowns to build homes on allocated plots.
Wednesday’s collapse is one of the most serious such incidents in Morocco since the fall of a minaret in Meknes in 2010, which killed 41 people.
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