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Haiti earthquake: government fears toll could rise to 300,000
Haiti's government has claimed the toll from the country's earthquake could rise to as many as 300,000 dead.
By Nick Allen in Port-au-Prince and Alex Spillius in Washington
Published: 7:38PM GMT 24 Jan 2010
A young child walks past a sign welcoming US Marines and indicating that there are dead bodies inside a destroyed building Photo: AP
The confirmed death toll was raised to 150,000 on Sunday Photo: AP
The confirmed death toll was raised to 150,000 on Sunday, but that was only the count of bodies so far found and collected in the capital Port-au-Prince.
It did not include those recovered in other areas like the shattered city of Leogane, near the earthquake epicentre, and Jacmel on the southern coast.
The count did not include the large number of bodies burned by relatives after lying for days in the streets, and those still under the wreckage of their homes.
"Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble - 200,000 ... 300,000?" said Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, the information minister. "Who knows the overall death toll?"
She said the final toll may never be known.
International aid workers said they would speed up relief efforts in Haiti after criticism that food, water and medicine was not getting to victims now living in nightmarish conditions in the Western hemisphere's poorest nation.
Rajiv Shah, head of the US Agency for International Development, said:
"The scale of the destruction and the human consequence is just unparalleled. We're never going to meet the need as quickly as we'd like."
Read more at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...vernment-fears-toll-could-rise-to-300000.html
Haiti's government has claimed the toll from the country's earthquake could rise to as many as 300,000 dead.
By Nick Allen in Port-au-Prince and Alex Spillius in Washington
Published: 7:38PM GMT 24 Jan 2010
The confirmed death toll was raised to 150,000 on Sunday, but that was only the count of bodies so far found and collected in the capital Port-au-Prince.
It did not include those recovered in other areas like the shattered city of Leogane, near the earthquake epicentre, and Jacmel on the southern coast.
The count did not include the large number of bodies burned by relatives after lying for days in the streets, and those still under the wreckage of their homes.
"Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble - 200,000 ... 300,000?" said Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, the information minister. "Who knows the overall death toll?"
She said the final toll may never be known.
International aid workers said they would speed up relief efforts in Haiti after criticism that food, water and medicine was not getting to victims now living in nightmarish conditions in the Western hemisphere's poorest nation.
Rajiv Shah, head of the US Agency for International Development, said:
"The scale of the destruction and the human consequence is just unparalleled. We're never going to meet the need as quickly as we'd like."
Read more at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...vernment-fears-toll-could-rise-to-300000.html