The prosecutor’s office said that there had been a family celebration in one of the buildings at the time of the collapse, while the other was unoccupied.
An investigation had been opened to “determine the real causes” of the incident.
By Wednesday mid-afternoon, rescue teams had completed searches for survivors, Abdelaziz Makhmakh, regional civil protection commander, told AFP.
Deadliest in a decade
“Construction in the area is almost anarchic, completely out of control,” said 20-year-old Bilal Ben Daoued. “This is supposed to be a modern neighbourhood where plots of land were offered to rehouse families who were living in slums.”
“It is very clear that the safety conditions are not being respected,” he added. “The investigation needs to explain this to us, and the authorities need to take responsibility.”
Local authorities said preliminary reports suggested the buildings were constructed in 2006.
Images from the pre-dawn scene showed first responders carrying a corpse in a grey body bag to waiting emergency vehicles, as residents gathered to watch the rescue efforts.
Other workers with jackhammers and pickaxes tried to dig through the rubble, at times with the help of mechanical excavators.
The official news agency MAP reported the injured were taken to Fes’ University Hospital Centre.
The accident was the deadliest of its kind in a decade.
In 2014, three buildings in the western city of Casablanca collapsed, killing 23 people.
In 2016, there were two deadly building collapses within the span of a week.
One was a home in the western city of Marrakech where two children were killed, while the other was a four-storey building that killed four people and injured two dozen more.
In February of last year, five people died in the collapse of a house in Fes’ old city.
Last May in Fes, nine people died when a residential building collapsed.
The structure had been listed as at risk of collapse and its occupants had been ordered to evacuate, a local authority source told AFP at the time.
- Agence France-Presse
