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100,000 estimated dead in Haiti quake: PM
[Al Arabiya Latest] The death toll in the Haiti quake could top 100,000, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said Wednesday after a after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the Island, toppling shantytowns and even the presidential palace.The final death toll could be "well over 100,000," the prime minister told American television channel CNN after his Caribbean nation was struck by a 7.0 quake and several powerful aftershocks that rattled the poorest country in the Americas. Injured residents of the crowded Caribbean capital poured into streets screaming in panic with each new tremor. Bodies were just left in the streets or crushed under rubble. Collapsing buildings left Port-au-Prince choked with cement dust for hours after the earthquake. The quake toppled the cupola on the gleaming white presidential palace, a major hotel where 200 tourists were missing and the headquarters of the U.N. mission in Haiti where up to 250 personnel were unaccounted for. "The building of the U.N. peace mission... collapsed and it would appear that all those who were in the building, including my friend (peacekeepers chief) Hedi Annabi... and that all those who were with him and around him are dead," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told RTL radio. Annabi is the head of the 9,000-strong United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Brazil is the biggest contributor to the mission with 1,200 personnel. Posted by: Fred 2010-01-14 |
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