Agadir

He was just 8 and asleep when a large earthquake struck Morocco in 1960, wiping out entire neighborhoods in the coastal city of Agadir, near the Atlas Mountains, and killing at least 12,000 people.

Although deadly quakes have happened relatively recently—one in 2004, which shook the Mediterranean port city of Al Hoceima, killed several hundred people, for example—the last truly cataclysmic quake in the region was the Agadir earthquake in 1960.

Morocco’s deadliest quake was a magnitude 5.8 temblor in 1960 that struck near the city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000.

Just over 60 years ago, the country was rocked by a magnitude-5.8 quake that killed over 12,000 people on its western coast, where the city of Agadir, southwest of Marrakech, crumbled.

It shook not only Marrakesh but also Agadir, a resort on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, and Ouarzazate, a major city in the southeast.