At least 22 people have been killed and 16 others injured after two buildings collapsed in the Moroccan city of Fez on Wednesday morning.
Two adjacent four-storey buildings, housing eight families, collapsed in the Al Mustaqbal neighbourhood in Fez, MAP news agency reported. It is the deadliest accident of its kind in the kingdom in recent years.
The Fez prosecutor's office said there had been a family celebration in one of the buildings at the time of the collapse, while the other was unoccupied. It said an investigation had been opened to "determine the real causes" of the incident.
Search and rescue operations were continuing to recover any other people who may be trapped under the rubble, the news agency said. Workers with pneumatic drills and pickaxes were trying to dig through the debris, at times with the help of mechanical excavators.
The injured were transferred to the University Hospital Centre, with residents of neighbouring houses evacuated as a precautionary measure.
Witnesses at the scene told state-owned broadcaster SNRT News that buildings in the Al Mustaqbal neighbourhood, a densely populated area in the west of the city, had shown signs of cracking for some time.
Fez, a former capital dating back to the eighth century and the country's third-most-populous city. In February last year, five people died in the collapse of a house in Fez's old city.
And nearly a decade ago, in 2016, there were two deadly building collapses within a week. One was a home in the western city of Marrakech whose collapse killed two children, while the other involved a four-storey building that killed four people and injured two dozen more.
Deteriorating living conditions in Morocco sparked protests in September over poverty and public services.
The unrest in the usually stable North African country has been fuelled by recent reports of the deaths of eight pregnant women at a public hospital in the city of Agadir, which critics have condemned as a symptom of a failing system.
Demonstrators have been calling for a change of government and for Moroccan Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch to resign.
