A top Bury fire officer is part of a team who are helping with rescue efforts in Morocco to help the country after a devastating earthquake.

Martin Foran, incident command development officer at Bury Training and Safety Centre, is among a team of five Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS) staff members who flew out to Marrakesh on Sunday to lend their skills and experience after a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck on Friday.

More than 2,600 people have died following the earthquake, which has left many homes and buildings destroyed.

The GMFRS team is teaming up with 60 crew members from 14 fire and rescue services.

Martin, who previously served as Ramsbottom and Heywood fire stations, will be an operations manager.

He also travelled to Turkey in February to support the search and rescue operation after earthquakes struck the country's border with Syria.

Martin has been joined by watch manager Gavin Kearsley from the Ashton technical response unit, who will be a crew leader as well as watch managers John Hughes and Simon Cording from Leigh technical response unit and crew manager Ross Strother from GMFRS's technical training team, who will all be technicians.

They are being supported back in Greater Manchester by watch manager Mike Hirst who is coordinating the GMFRS response and who also joined the Turkey response in February.

GMFRS assistant chief fire officer, Barry Moore, said: "GMFRS is pleased to be supporting the national search and rescue operation in Morocco and we send our thoughts to the people of Morocco, and everyone affected by this devastating event.

"Our team of five highly skilled search and rescue technicians have safely arrived in Marrakesh where they have set up a base of operations and we expect to hear more from the team in the coming days, but we are grateful to them and to their families."

National Fire Chiefs Council chair Mark Hardingham added: "The thoughts of the UK's fire and rescue services are with all those affected by the devastating earthquake in Morocco.

"A team of specially trained firefighters and medics from the UK has been deployed to assist following a request from the Moroccan government to the British government.

"They will be providing specialist technical support where it is needed most to save lives and support local emergency service teams."