At least eighteen have died and five more injured when a stampede broke out in a southwestern Moroccan town on Sunday, Morocco’s Interior Ministry said.

Most of the victims are women and the elderly, who had been scrambling for food handed out by an unnamed charity in the small coastal town of Sidi Boulaalam, a medical source in Morocco said.

The donor had organised similar handouts before, but this year around 1,000 people arrived, storming an iron barrier under which several women were crushed, a local journalist noted.

Morocco’s King Mohammed ordered that the victims’ families be given any assistance they needed and the wounded treated at his cost, the Ministry added.

"A criminal investigation had been opened to determine cause of the incident and to determine who is responsible ," the Ministry pointed out.