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Five hundred thousand feared dead in Haiti earthquake | Nearly five hundred thousand are feared to be dead in
Haiti after a grade 7.0-magnitude quake struck the impoverished country's capital on Tuesday afternoon. A major international relief effort was launched to hurry
rescuers and suppliers to the Caribbean country as the streets of Port-au-Prince
were left scattered with corpses and shattered buildings, The Telegraph reports.
Hospitals and schools collapsed and were reportedly full of dead while 200
foreigners
were missing from the city's expensive Hotel Montana. The whereabouts of almost
200 United Nations staff in the city are yet to be ascertained including the civilian
head of mission, Hedi Annabi of Tunisia. The city's Catholic archbishop, Monsignor
Serge Miot, was a confirmed casualty, as his body was pulled from the rubble of
his offices. Haitian President Rene Preval, whose palace was substantially destroyed,
described the scene in his capital as "unimaginable". He said he had been stepping
over the bodies of the dead and hearing the cries of the trapped underneath his
country's collapsed parliament building. The country's Prime Minister, Jean-Max
Bellerive, said the government believed the death toll in the city of two million
people was "well over 100,000" while Youri Latortue, a senior senator, said it
could be 500,000. Both admitted they had no way of knowing but aid workers on
the scene reported widespread destruction and suffering as severely injured people
lay in the streets, unable to get medical assistance. Haiti, the poorest country
in the western hemisphere, was already struggling to recover from a series of
severe hurricanes and flooding in 2008. The country sits on a major fault line
and scientists have warned for years that it was likely to be hit by a major
earthquake. |
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