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A group of ten Portuguese tourists in Morocco complained this Sunday about the lack of response from the Portuguese authorities regarding the repatriation flight, which took place this afternoon, after the earthquake that hit the country on Friday.
With a flight to Portugal scheduled for this Sunday afternoon, the Portuguese would have liked to return early on the repatriation flight, but regretted the lack of information from the consular service.
“I called the consular emergency for more than an hour, constantly. When they finally responded, they said that the repatriation flight should only take place after our commercial flight. But they asked to send an ’email’ with the names of the tourists,” she told Lusa Filipa Marques.
António Cardoso sent an email, which was answered “after 10 minutes”, asking him to send the names of the tourists. “But this second ’email’ has already received no response,” he said.
The Portuguese Air Force expelled 102 Portuguese citizens from Morocco on Saturday night who asked for help to leave the African country.
In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that the 102 Portuguese (including the father and child who were injured after the earthquake) arrived this morning on the Portuguese Air Force plane that had flown to the city on Saturday night. from Marrakesh.
The withdrawal operation, “despite the vicissitudes on the ground, was developed in an orderly and peaceful manner,” indicated the ministry, highlighting that it will continue to be in “contact with the Portuguese who remain in the region most affected” by the earthquake. , which, according to the latest official balance, caused 2,012 deaths and 2,059 injuries, of which 1,404 became seriously ill.
Coming from Lisbon and Porto, the tourists were in Jamma El-Fna square, one of the most tourist attractions in Marrakech, on Friday night when the earthquake occurred.
“The ground started to shake, people panicked, everyone started running,” Filipa Marques told Lusa, reporting that they were right next to the minaret of the Kharbouch mosque, which partially collapsed.
“Two minutes before we were there. The minaret fell and the cars were buried,” she said.
The Portuguese, who were staying in a ‘riad’ (small hotel) in the Medina, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, spent the night outdoors, because there was “a lot of destruction”: the rubble from the collapse of the facades of buildings. made access to the accommodation difficult, and for fear that the aftershocks would cause the building to collapse, leaving it with cracks.
“We went to pick up the essentials and returned to the square. We slept on a rug,” said Filipa Marques.
The earthquake, whose epicenter was recorded in the town of Ighil, 63 kilometers southwest of the city of Marrakech, was felt in Portugal and Spain and reached a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale, according to the National Institute of Geophysics of Marrakesh. .
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) recorded the magnitude of the earthquake at 6.8.
The kingdom of Morocco declared three days of national mourning.
Source: Observadora
