Rare Meteorite Sparks Gold Rush in Southern Morocco as Army Secures Site

On Thursday, June 27, around 5 pm, a meteorite ended its long space journey in Morocco, near the town of Zag, in the south of the Kingdom, at the level of the Assa-Zag province, dependent on the Guelmim-Oued Noun region. The citizens saw a ball of fire fall with a white smoke trail behind it.

A good number of them traveled to the site, aboard 4x4s. Some are said to have even found fragments, of different weights, the smallest weighing a few dozen grams while the largest, about one kilogram. They would be snatched up on the black market.

The Hespress media relays the comments of Abderrahmane Ibhi, an expert in this field, and a teacher at the University of Ibn Zorh. He stated that this fall was "very important" and that "this meteorite has a dark crust, which indicates that it has just fallen and that its geological characteristics show that it is a standard chondrite called LL6", specifying among other things, that the probable origin of this type of meteorite would be Mars, the moon or asteroids.

According to the same specialist, these meteorites "are sold at high prices, because their analysis informs us about the composition and evolution of the solar system. Scientists make a difference between the meteorites that people find from time to time and those that have just fallen and still retain certain useful characteristics for understanding the composition of the planets from which they come".

But the army did not intend to let the people help themselves. Other reasons also prompted it to set up a blockade: only 5 kilometers separated the site of the meteorite’s fall from the sand wall. The Goud media specifies that military vehicles from the Royal Armed Forces were activated in the region, since the morning of Monday, July 1, 2019, in order to make the dozens of Moroccans who were looking for the precious pieces of the meteorite leave the site.