Photograph: Jalal Morchidi/EPA
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has attempted to soothe tensions with Morocco over the supply of humanitarian aid, after a deadly earthquake centred high in the Atlas mountains.
Search and rescue teams backed by the Moroccan military continued a frantic search to locate and airlift the wounded from remote mountainous villages in the Atlas mountains where the 6.8 magnitude quake struck last Friday. But as rescue efforts continued for a fifth day, the chances of finding survivors were fading.
Moroccan authorities said earlier this week they had “responded favourably” to offers of help from search and rescue teams from Britain, Spain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, but declined to accept aid from other countries including France.
In a video addressing the Moroccan public posted to social media, Macron said it was a sovereign matter for Morocco whether it accepted French aid or not. Previously, at the G20 in Delhi, he had said France had done “everything we could do” and that aid would be deployed the second it was requested.
Morocco has bristled at any suggestion that the state lacks capacity to respond to the disaster.
“There have been plenty of unwarranted controversies in these past few days,” Macron said in the video, posted while non-governmental French organisations departed for the earthquake zone south of Marrakech and amid a continued silence from Rabat. “There is the possibility of supplying humanitarian aid directly. It is clearly up to his majesty the king and the Moroccan government, in a manner entirely befitting their sovereignty, to organise international aid,” he said.
“I wish that all these controversies which divide and complicate matters during this already tragic moment can subside out of respect for all involved.”
Tensions between the two nations were heightened even before the earthquake struck. Morocco has not dispatched an ambassador to France for months and Macron has aborted several planned state visits to Rabat. French colonial rule over Morocco, lasting from 1912 to 1956, has long cast a shadow over relations between the two countries.
Morocco’s king, Mohammed VI, is however believed to spend much of his time at his multiple private residences in France, governing from a chateau near Paris or a mansion close to the Eiffel Tower.
A source close to Morocco’s royal palace said a reaction to Macron’s video message from either the palace or the foreign ministry was unlikely.
“In Morocco, we don’t govern via Twitter,” they said. “This video makes a mockery of governance. He has no right to address the Moroccan people directly … He is trying to prevent further controversies, but these are controversies that he has both created and fuelled himself, using social media.”
Controversies around aid were not restricted solely to Moroccan relations with France. Earlier this week, Algeria declared that it would open its airspace to allow humanitarian assistance to reach Morocco, a profound shift after Algiers cut diplomatic ties with its neighbour two years ago over what it termed Morocco’s “hostile actions”.
Days later, Algerian state television displayed images of first responders lined up on the tarmac of a military airport near the town of Boufarik, ready to board three nearby planes carrying aid to Morocco.
Morocco’s justice minister, Abdellatif Ouahbi, told Saudi Arabian satellite channel Al Arabiya that Rabat would accept Algerian aid, although Moroccan media later claimed his comments were misinterpreted and denied any suggestion that Rabat would accept the aid.
The Algerian foreign ministry then released a statement via the state press agency, adding that “the Algerian government has taken note of the official response of the Kingdom of Morocco, which said that it was not in need of the humanitarian aid proposed by Algeria”.
