Eleven dead, nine missing in floods in Morocco

Moroccan authorities told AFP on Sunday that 11 people had died and nine were missing in floods caused by an “exceptional” climatic phenomenon in the country's southern regions.

Interior Ministry spokesman Rachid Khalfi said authorities initially recorded “eleven deaths” after “severe thunderstorms” hit “17 prefectures and provinces of the kingdom.”

According to Khalfi, seven of the victims died in the province of Tata, about 740 kilometers south of Rabat, and two in Errachidia, almost 500 kilometers east of Marrakesh.

He said one of the victims was a foreign national, without giving further details.

Khalfi also said: “The amount of rainfall recorded in two days is equivalent to the amount that these regions normally receive in an entire year.”

The floods also caused 40 houses to collapse and 93 roads to be damaged. In addition, “the electricity, drinking water and telephone networks were affected,” he added.

Normally dry areas in southern Morocco and Algeria have been hit by floods caused by heavy rains since Friday, officials told AFP on Sunday.

Areas in southern Morocco are affected by “an extremely unstable tropical air mass,” Lhoussaine Youabd, spokesman for the Moroccan Directorate General for Meteorology, told AFP.

This “led to the formation of unstable and violent clouds” that caused massive rainfall, he said, describing the phenomenon as “extraordinary.”

According to the Moroccan weather service, 47 millimeters of water fell in the Ouarzazate region within three hours and around 170 millimeters in Tagounite near the Algerian border.

“We haven’t seen this much rain in about 10 years,” Omar Gana, a local from Ouarzazate, told AFP.

The heavy rains hit regions of Morocco that have been suffering from drought for at least six years.

The Algerian civil defense had previously reported one fatality in Illizi, about 1,900 kilometers south of Algiers, while another person was missing due to flooding in the south.

Later in the day, a total of two people were reported missing in El Bayadh and Tamanrasset.

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It was also reported that several families trapped by floods in the south had been rescued.

Videos posted on social media showed that some areas in the Sahara were under water. In Ouarzazate, Morocco, entire streets were flooded.

Morocco is suffering from severe water stress after six consecutive years of drought; by the end of August, dams had shrunk to less than 28 percent of their capacity.