Morocco Earthquake: Death Count Rises to Nearly 2,900

Moroccan rescuers supported by foreign teams on Monday faced an intensifying race against time to dig out any survivors from the rubble of mountain villages after the country's strongest-ever earthquake.

The 6.8-magnitude quake struck the Atlas mountains late Friday southwest of the tourist centre of Marrakesh. It killed at least 2,862 people and injured more than 2,500 others, according to the latest official toll.

In the disaster-stricken community of Talat Nyacoub, 12 ambulances and several dozen 4X4s from the army and police were deployed while around 100 Moroccan rescuers were searching for signs of life in the collapsed buildings.

Nearby, AFP saw a Spanish team of 30 firefighters, a doctor, nurse and two technicians coordinating with Moroccan authorities before starting to dig, as a helicopter flew overhead.

"The big difficulty is in zones remote and difficult to access, like here, but the injured are choppered out," Annika Coll, who heads the Spanish team, told AFP.

About 70 kilometres north, another Spanish team from the Military Emergencies Unit (UME) had set up camp since Sunday night on the edge of Amizmiz village.

Moroccan and Spanish rescuers there were hard at work trying to extract five members of a family from a house that had been crushed by the quake.