The Atlas fault system runs through the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, a range uplifted where the slow convergence of the African and Eurasian plates squeezes northwest Africa. The faults thrust ancient basement rock upward, building peaks over 4,000 metres despite the region lying far from any plate boundary.
These are reverse and thrust faults driven by compression, many of them buried beneath the folded ranges and long considered only moderately active. Convergence here is slow, roughly a few millimetres per year, so large earthquakes are rare but can strike with little warning on faults that have accumulated strain over centuries.
The system produced the devastating September 2023 Al Haouz earthquake (magnitude 6.8) in the High Atlas south of Marrakech, which killed nearly 3,000 people and destroyed mountain villages. Coming from a fault zone long thought relatively quiet, it was the deadliest Moroccan earthquake since the 1960 Agadir disaster.