The studied region, in the northern border of the African Plate, has suffered moderate to strong earthquakes in the last decades. Among them, the September 9, 1954, and the October 10, 1980, El Asnam (formerly known as Orléansville), Algeria, earthquakes, with magnitudes MS6.7 and 7.3, respectively, the February 29, 1960, Agadir, Morocco, M*6.0 earthquake, or the most recent May 21, 2003, Zemmouri-Algiers, Algeria, MW6.8 earthquake. The 1954, 1980 and 2003 Algerian earthquakes caused a large loss of lives (1200, 5000–20,000, according to different estimates, and 2300 people killed, respectively), as well as the 1960 Moroccan earthquake (*12,000 people killed).
In all cases, there were a myriad of injured people, left homeless and heavily damaged and destroyed homes due to structural inadequacies of the buildings. Moreover, critical facilities as hospitals or schools were damaged or destroyed in all quoted earthquakes. Only during the 2003 Algerian earthquake, 130 schools suffered extensive to complete damage in the Algiers region (Bendimerad2004). Apart from these large earthquakes, a large amount of small to moderate earthquakes has been also recorded in this area. A review can be read in the works by Peláez et al. (2007) and Hamdache et al. (2010).