HICHAM Ajttou stands at the edge of his emptied city, watching muddy water lap against doorways where children played just weeks ago. Behind him, 50,000 people – nearly half of Ksar el-Kebir’s population – have vanished into evacuation camps and relatives’ homes, leaving a once-bustling northern Moroccan trade hub transformed into what he calls “a ghost town.”
“What concerns us is the uncertainty of what happens next,” Ajttou said, his voice tight with worry. After moving his own family to safety in Tangier, he returned to volunteer in relief efforts, joining thousands picking through the wreckage of lives built over generations. “The dam is at full capacity, and we do not know how long this situation will persist.”
The Loukkos River, swollen by weeks of torrential rain that ended a punishing seven-year drought, has turned Ksar el-Kebir’s streets into canals. Water nearly a meter deep submerges the ancient medina. Main highways – the RN1 and RN2 arteries connecting the city to Larache and Rabat – lie impassable beneath the deluge. Markets that fed families sit shuttered indefinitely. Schools remain dark. Half the city flickers without power.
For residents who built their livelihoods on agriculture, trade, and the daily commerce of a regional crossroads, the floods haven’t just displaced bodies – they’ve obliterated futures.
“We Have Never Seen This Before”
The terror arrived without warning for many. One resident, her home along the Rabat road now underwater, captured the collective shock: “We have never experienced flooding of this magnitude; it is the first time. I’m not exaggerating, it is frightening.”
As power failed and waters rose, families scrambled to upper floors and rooftops. Military helicopters descended through the rain to pluck the stranded from buildings. Civil protection teams launched boats through neighbourhoods transformed into lakes. Volunteers commandeered personal watercraft, ferrying neighbours to dry ground in desperate relay missions.
The images echo floods that struck Safi earlier in 2025, where one mother of six told reporters she escaped with only the clothes on her back. “We lost everything,” she said, a refrain now repeated across Ksar el-Kebir’s temporary camps, where the Royal Armed Forces and Red Crescent distribute water, food, and blankets to families sleeping in tents erected at sports stadiums.
An Economy Swept Away
The cruel irony haunts every conversation: the same rains that have filled Morocco’s national reservoirs to 62% capacity, a desperately needed reprieve after drought crippled agriculture, are now destroying the very farms and businesses that depend on that water.
Ksar el-Kebir’s economy runs on land. Farmers who celebrated the end of the drought now watch fields submerge. Market vendors who rely on daily sales face weeks of closure, their goods spoiled or unreachable. Small business owners survey shops filled with mud instead of customers, calculating losses they may never recover.
“We are caught between two disasters,” said one local merchant, speaking on condition of anonymity as he salvaged damaged inventory. “Seven years of drought nearly killed us. Now the water we prayed for is finishing the job.”
Roads impassable with floodwaters mean no transport of goods, no access to suppliers, no income. For families living day-to-day, even a week without work threatens catastrophe. The economic fallout extends beyond immediate losses—rebuilding will require capital most residents don’t have, in a region already stressed by years of agricultural failure.
A City Holding Its Breath
In the medina’s ancient quarters, where water transformed alleyways into rivers, dozens of buildings face structural damage from days of inundation. The full scope remains unknown, authorities have prioritised rescues over assessments, and no official tally of destroyed homes exists yet. Civil protection teams pump water from submerged neighbourhoods while erecting sand barriers against further overflow from the Oued Al Makhazine dam, filled beyond capacity.
A local hospital and dialysis clinic struggled to operate amid power failures. Liberation Street, a commercial hub, lies submerged. Provincial committees coordinate logistics for temporary housing sites along the Tétouan road, preparing for thousands who may have no homes to return to for weeks or longer.
“The city has become a ghost town,” Ajttou repeated, the phrase a mantra for a trauma still unfolding. “Most residents have either left voluntarily or been evacuated.”
King Mohammed VI has directed the rapid deployment of emergency resources, and praise for swift response teams echoes through evacuation centres. But gratitude mixes uneasily with grief and fear. Families separated from everything they built wait in tents, clinging to uncertain futures while rain clouds gather on the horizon.
At the Abdessalam Ghrissi stadium in Ennada and the Karim El Ahmadi stadium in Salam, hundreds of families bed down on stadium floors. Children who should be in school play between tent rows. Parents who should be working line up for meals. Everyone wonders the same thing Ajttou voiced: What happens next?
The floodwaters are slowly receding. But for 50,000 people whose city drowned in the space of days, the real question isn’t when the water will retreat- it’s whether anything will be left when it does.
