Free Republic

A powerful earthquake struck Morocco’s High Atlas mountains late on Friday, killing at least 296 people, destroying buildings and sending residents of major cities rushing from their homes. The Interior Ministry said the number constituted a preliminary death toll and that 153 people had been injured. A local official said most deaths were in mountain areas that were hard to reach. Residents of Marrakech, the nearest big city to the epicenter, said some buildings had collapsed in the old city, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and local television showed pictures of a fallen mosque minaret with rubble lying on smashed...

It feels strange visiting a country like Morocco and listening to people extol the virtues of a political system my country waged a revolution against. Morocco has a king, and he’s a real one too, not some kind of a figurehead. But I went there, I listened, and after almost ten years of visiting Middle Eastern countries wracked by tyranny, terrorism, botched revolutions, and wars, I was perhaps a bit more willing to hear what they had to say than I might have been a decade ago. A monarchy is a tough sell for Americans. The founders of our country...

MARRAKESH – A bomb killed 14 people including foreigners in Morocco's bustling tourist destination of Marrakesh, officials said on Thursday, in an attack that bore the hallmark of Islamist militants. The blast ripped through a cafe overlooking Marrakesh's Jamaa el-Fnaa square, a spot that is often packed with foreign tourists. A Reuters photographer said he saw rescuers pulling dismembered bodies from the wreckage. If the bombing is the work of Islamist militants, it will be the first time they have carried out a major attack in Morocco since 2003, when a series of suicide bombings in the commercial capital, Casablanca,...