With particles and fallen rock blocking roads to Moroccan villages hit hardest by an earthquake, many residents started burying their lifeless and foraging for scarce provides on Sunday as they waited for presidency assist.

That wait could also be prolonged.

The strongest quake to hit the area in a century spared neither metropolis house dwellers nor these dwelling within the mud-brick houses of the High Atlas Mountains, however many within the distant and rugged areas of Morocco have been left nearly completely to fend for themselves.

Survivors, confronted with widespread electrical energy and phone blackouts, mentioned they had been working low on meals and water. Some our bodies had been being buried earlier than they may very well be washed as Muslim rituals require.

The Friday evening quake, whose magnitude has been put at 6.8, killed greater than 2,100 folks and injured greater than 2,400, Moroccan state tv reported on Sunday.

In one devastated city in southern Morocco, Amizmiz, a girl’s cry out of the blue pierced the air. She had simply discovered after dashing to the city that her two brothers had been lifeless, defined her nephew, Lacher Anflouss, 37.

“A lot of people are reacting quietly at first because they still haven’t processed it,” Mr. Anflouss mentioned. “And then when they finally process it …” His voice trailed off.

The Moroccan state media launched footage of helicopters airlifting assist to distant areas, and King Mohammed VI mentioned he had ordered the federal government to supply shelter quickly and rebuild homes for these in misery, “particularly orphans and the vulnerable.”

But the federal government has been usually tight-lipped because the earthquake struck, releasing little details about rescue efforts and offering solely rare updates on casualties, and a few Moroccans took to social media to criticize the response as sluggish and uncoordinated.

In the Atlas Mountains village of Douar Tnirt on Sunday, folks sleeping outdoors for the third evening lined up for desperately wanted assist, together with blankets, diapers and water. But the provides got here not from the federal government, which villagers mentioned had not supplied any help because the catastrophe, however from a charity in Marrakesh.

Abdessamad Ait Ihia, 17, who grew up close by, rushed again to the realm on Saturday from Casablanca, the place he works, to examine on his household. He had seen no signal of presidency rescue or aid staff, he mentioned.

“We just want aid and people to help us, that’s all we want,” he mentioned.

About 20 miles away in one other mountain village, Azgour, each energy and cellphone service had been knocked out, so it was not attainable even to name for out of doors assist. Young males following screams at the hours of darkness pulled folks out of the rubble themselves with their naked palms, all of the whereas fearing additional collapse.

“We didn’t wait for anybody to start saving people’s lives,” mentioned the village’s imam, Abdeljalil Lamghrari, 33.

With water-pumping mechanisms damaged by the earthquake, villagers there have been pressured to enterprise miles away to search out working wells, and desperation was rising.

Still, the top of a village affiliation, Jamal Elabrki, 54, made an try at optimism.

“Rain is forecast for this week,” he mentioned. “Without it, we’re afraid. It’s going to be really bad.”

Dozens of nations have supplied help. Spain mentioned it was sending search-and rescue groups, and the Qatari state media reported that Qatar would deploy specialised autos and tools. But on Sunday, some governments and assist teams mentioned they had been nonetheless ready for Morocco to present the inexperienced mild, whilst rural hospitals had been overwhelmed.

Arnaud Fraisse, the founding father of Secouristes Sans Frontières, a gaggle that assisted with rescues after the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in February, mentioned in an interview on France Inter radio that Morocco had not given his group permission to assist.

President Emmanuel Macron of France mentioned his authorities was in contact with the Moroccan authorities and stood prepared to help. “The moment, the second they ask, we will deploy,” he mentioned on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in India.

Samia Errazzouki, a Moroccan American historian of North Africa at Stanford University, mentioned in an interview that the federal government’s “heavily controlled and centralized” capabilities had been impeding its catastrophe response. “The immediate hours of any natural disaster are the most crucial,” she mentioned, but lengthy hours handed earlier than the king made a public assertion.

“How many lives could have been saved?” Ms. Errazzouki requested.

The first three days after an earthquake are typically known as the “golden period” for rescuers, so it is a essential time for emergency staff attempting to rescue survivors in Morocco, mentioned Caroline Holt, a director on the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

But she additionally pressured the necessity to present folks with clear water and to establish broken buildings that also pose a hazard. “We need to make sure we don’t have a disaster within a disaster,” she mentioned in a press release.

As evening fell on Sunday, households whose homes had been destroyed or had been unsafe ready to sleep behind makeshift shelters of colourful cloth and plastic tarps held down by rocks or in yellow tents supplied by firefighters. Others involved about aftershocks slept out within the open.

In villages like Azgour, which lies between two ridges of the Atlas Mountains south of Marrakesh, houses are generally constructed of mud bricks, a standard building methodology that leaves them extremely weak to earthquakes and heavy rains. The quake decreased half the houses in Azgour to rubble and left the remaining ones uninhabitable.

More than 300,000 civilians in Marrakesh and its outskirts had been additionally affected by the quake, in keeping with a report from the World Health Organization. Seventeen folks died within the Marrakesh space, Morocco’s Interior Ministry mentioned Sunday. But Marrakesh and its walled Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage web site, appeared to have been spared heavy injury.

Some Moroccans greeted the federal government’s anemic response to the catastrophe with resignation. Memories are nonetheless contemporary of a 2004 earthquake that was one of the vital devastating in recent times: Then the prime minister didn’t go to the hardest-hit areas instantly as a result of protocol dictated that he not seem earlier than the king did.

Not that the nation has a excessive tolerance for public outrage. Moroccan regulation criminalizes criticism of the king, which can assist clarify Moroccans’ muted response.

On Sunday, it was clear that villages throughout the Atlas Mountains — even ones simply an hour or two from Marrakesh, a significant metropolis — had been getting little or no official assist. Ambulances had been a uncommon sight, with most injured individuals who had been pulled from the wreckage pushed to Marrakesh hospitals by non-public automotive or bike, in the event that they made it in any respect.

Jenny Gross reported from London. Anushka Patil contributed reporting from New York.