Marrakech – A magnitude 4 earthquake struck Morocco’s Sidi Kacem province on Friday evening at 5:13 p.m. local time. The National Institute of Geophysics (ING) located the epicenter in the commune of Sidi Ahmed Benaissa.
ING Director Nacer Jabour told SNRTnews the quake’s hypocenter was recorded at a depth of 33 kilometers. The exact coordinates placed it at 34.738 degrees north latitude and 5.783 degrees west longitude.
Jabour classified the tremor as “felt” but described it as ordinary. He noted the province has experienced similar seismic events in the past. The ING director added that while Sidi Kacem does not exhibit notable seismic activity, Morocco has recently recorded sporadic earthquake clusters across various locations in the country.
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The country’s seismic exposure stems from its proximity to the boundary between the African and Eurasian tectonic plates, known as the Azores-Gibraltar transform fault. The greatest seismic hazard concentrates in the northern regions, closest to this boundary.
Morocco carries a long and painful history with earthquakes. A devastating 5.8 magnitude quake destroyed much of Agadir in 1960, killing around 15,000 people and forcing the city to be entirely rebuilt. A 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck Al Hoceima on the northern Mediterranean coast in 2004, killing over 600 people and displacing around 15,000.
Most recently, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake jolted Al Haouz province in the High Atlas Mountains on September 8, 2023, killing more than 2,900 people and injuring 5,500. That tremor was the strongest to hit Morocco in at least 120 years.
Friday’s tremor in Sidi Kacem posed no such danger. At magnitude 4 and a depth of 33 kilometers, the quake fell well below the threshold of destructive seismic events. No casualties or structural damage were reported.
Still, the incident serves as a reminder that seismic activity remains an unpredictable feature of Morocco’s geological landscape.
