At least 19 people have been killed and 16 injured by the collapse of two buildings in Morocco’s historic Fes city, according to the state news agency.

The death toll from the collapse of the four-storey buildings on Wednesday included children, local media reported.

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The buildings were inhabited by eight families and were in the Al-Mustaqbal neighborhood, the state agency said.

Police and civil protection services rushed to the site, social media footage showed. The injured were transported to the university hospital centre in Fes, the state news agency reported.

In September, deteriorating living conditions in Morocco caused protests over poverty and public services.

In February of last year, five people died in the collapse of a house in Fes’s old city.

And nearly a decade ago, in 2016, there were two deadly building collapses within the span of a week. One was a home in the western city of Marrakesh that killed two children, while the other was a four-storey building that killed four people and injured two dozen more.

In 2023, the government identified more than 12,000 buildings in Marrakesh and nearby regions as being vulnerable, according to local media reports.

Some authorities have suggested that many structures could have weakened following massive earthquakes that same year.