It was very scary and even now a complicated situation for the players. We had to sleep outside, near the swimming pool. Mentally, it’s difficult to keep up the concentration. But we think it is best this game is postponed because the mood among the players is understandably sombre and everyone is a little scared.Ĭongo’s coach Paul Put said his players were unharmed. The hotel is damaged but we can hopefully get new rooms on the ground. We have been outside for some 13-14 hours now. It’s quite strange that the Morocco game is off but ours is not. We have been told our match on Sunday must go ahead. Gambia coach Tom Saintfiet has told Reuters: Sunday’s Group G decider between Gambia and Congo is being played in Marrakech because Gambia do not have a stadium suitable for hosting international matches. The coaches of both teams said their players were traumatised by the event, but had been told they must go ahead with their match. The Congo and Gambia squads spent the night sleeping beside their respective hotel pools after the quake. However, Saturday’s match between Morocco and Liberia in Agadir – about 160 miles (260km) away from the epicentre – has been postponed. We didn’t know what was happening.Ĭongo and Gambia’s African Cup of Nations qualifier in Marrakech will go ahead as scheduled on Sunday despite the earthquake, Reuters reports. Then after 40 minutes everyone just sat on the pavement in the street just kind of waiting.
There were fire trucks and ambulances zooming past us, it was all so chaotic. We stood outside for another hour or two trying to figure out what had happened. Everyone was terrified to go back into their houses as they just didn’t know if that was the end or if it might continue. Once Shonibare, his wife and their daughter, who is just a few weeks old, reached the street he described a scene of “absolute chaos”.Įveryone ran outside, people were in shock, crying as they held their babies in their hands. The earthquake struck shortly after 11pm local time, sending stone buildings and pieces of a towering minaret tumbling in central Marrakech and causing widespread panic far from the rural town of Ighil in the Al Haouz province some 44 miles south of Marrakech. My wife picked up the baby and we ran outside but we weren’t sure what we were meant to do. My wife called out to me and obviously we both jumped for our daughter. Bode Shonibare, a British-Nigerian banker visiting his wife’s family in a northern district of Marrakech – the major city closest to the epicentre, said:įor the first few seconds, you don’t know what’s happening. These are the ones likely to be worst affected because of the lower quality construction materials used and also the slow response of the emergency services to make it to these rugged areas.Īmid shock and devastation that jolted people in towns and cities for miles around the epicentre of a powerful earthquake in Morocco, people across the country described paralysing fear of further aftershocks and widespread confusion.
Then they began to talk about aftershocks.īy the following day, Ali described a sense of eerie calm amid growing concern for the situation in remote villages. Everything was mayhem, people ran out in whatever clothes they were wearing and went down to the street. Then we opened the front doors and everyone was running out trying to evacuate, people were shouting and screaming. The one reassuring part was that nothing was falling, but still it was completely disorienting.
As she has a little more experience with earthquakes, she ran and hid under the table, so I did the same. Sociologist Amro Ali, who lives in the northern port city of Casablanca almost 270 miles from Ighil, described how the force of the quake jolted his home.
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