More than 2,900 people have died, most of them in hard-to-reach mountainous areas.

While orderly camps of large, government-issued tents and military field hospitals have sprung up in some of the larger towns, parts of the rugged region are still surviving on donations left on roadsides by citizens.

It is the North African country's deadliest earthquake since 1960, when a tremor was estimated to have killed at least 12,000 people, and the most powerful since at least 1900.

Paris and Rabat have had a difficult relationship in recent years notably over the issue of Western Sahara, which Morocco wants France to recognise as Moroccan.

Relief workers face the challenge of reaching the worst-affected villages in the High Atlas, a rugged mountain range where settlements are often remote and where many houses crumbled.

The mosque was built where the Almohad dynasty established its first capital in the Atlas valley before going on to seize Marrakech, proclaim its leader Caliph, and march on across the region propelled by religious zeal.

It is the country's deadliest quake in more than six decades.

Most deaths are said to be in mountain areas that are hard to reach.

The ban will take effect on Jan 3 and last until further notice.

The heavily guarded border is one of only two borders between the European Union and an African country, the other being Ceuta, also a Spanish enclave.

Tourism – which accounts for some 7% of Morocco's economy and creates hundreds of thousands of formal and informal jobs – was battered by Morocco's tight restrictions during the pandemic.

Morocco's 2004 family code puts the legal age of marriage at 18, but it includes a clause allowing judges to give families special dispensation to marry off children under that age.