Abdelali said the whole thing was over before anyone could react. One of the two buildings fell onto the other, he told the Moroccan news site Hespress, and he blamed years of crowded, unchecked building. “People shouldn’t keep building and encroaching on the next building [over],” he said.
At least 22 people died and 16 were hurt when the two four-storey residential buildings came down in Fez, Morocco, late on Dec. 9, 2025. State media said the buildings held eight families.
Another resident, Idris, put the collapse at less than two minutes from start to finish. “It was a sudden thing,” he told Hespress. “We were shocked, we couldn’t sleep, we ran away from our homes and went outside.”
A celebration in one building
Fez’s public prosecutor said one building was empty. The other was hosting a celebration for a newborn, a family gathering known as an Aqiqah, when it collapsed. Rescuers and diggers worked through the night, and footage from the scene showed them sifting through rubble in the dark. A clip posted by the news site Akhbarona showed a body being carried away on a stretcher.
The injured were taken to the University Hospital Centre, and people living in nearby buildings were moved out as a precaution, state media reported. A search for anyone still trapped under the debris continued.
Questions about the buildings
Several Moroccan outlets reported that the buildings, in a south-western suburb in the newer part of the city, had shown signs of deterioration for years. Hespress, citing a source, reported that the owners held a permit for only two floors and may have added more in violation of building rules. The prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into the cause.
The collapse is not the first in Fez this year. Nine people died in May when a condemned building came down in another neighbourhood. In February 2024, five people were killed when a house in the old city crumbled after heavy rain and strong winds.
Housing minister Adib Ben Ibrahim said in January that around 13,700 buildings across Morocco were at imminent risk of collapse.
Fez, in the north-east of the country, has sections dating to the 8th Century and is Morocco’s third-most populous city.
