https://arab.news/853jq
- The floods destroyed 56 homes and damaged 110 roads, as well as damaging electricity, water supply and phone networks
RABAT: Floods from torrential rains killed at least 18 people in the southern Morocco provinces of Tata, Tiznit, Errachidia, Tinghir and Taroudant, authorities said in a latest death toll on Monday.
At least four others were missing after floods swamped many villages in the area on Saturday, authorities added.
The dead include three foreign nationals from Spain, Canada and Peru, it said.
The floods destroyed 56 homes and damaged 110 roads, as well as damaging electricity, water supply and phone networks.
Earlier, interior ministry spokesman Rachid Khalfi said “the volume of precipitation recorded in two days is equivalent to that which these regions normally experience during an entire year.”
Usually arid areas in southern Morocco and Algeria have been drenched in floods caused by massive rainfall since Friday, officials told AFP Sunday.
Areas in southern Morocco have been affected “by an extremely unstable tropical air mass,” the spokesman for the Moroccan General Directorate of Meteorology, Lhoussaine Youabd, told AFP.
This “led to the formation of unstable and violent clouds” that caused massive rainfall, he said, describing the phenomenon as “exceptional.”
As a result, the Ouarzazate region received 47 millimeters of water in three hours, and Tagounite, near the Algerian border, some 170 millimeters, according to the Moroccan weather service.
“We haven’t seen such rain for about 10 years,” Omar Gana, an Ouarzazate local, told AFP.
The heavy rains hit regions of Morocco that have been suffering from drought for at least six years.
Morocco has been experiencing severe water stress after six consecutive years of drought, shrinking dam levels to less than 28 percent of capacity by the end of August.