The Hindu Business Line : Major quake hits Haiti; many feared dead

PORT-AU-PRINCE (HAITI): The strongest earthquake in more than 200 years rocked Haiti on Wednesday, collapsing a hospital where people screamed for help and heavily damaging the National Palace, UN peacekeeper headquarters and other buildings.

US officials reported bodies in the streets and an aid official described “total disaster and chaos.”

United Nations officials said a large number of UN personnel were unaccounted for. Communications were widely disrupted, making it impossible to get a full picture of damage as powerful aftershocks shook a desperately poor country where many buildings ar e flimsy. Electricity was out in some places.

Mr Karel Zelenka, a Catholic Relief Services representative in Port-au-Prince, told US colleagues before phone service failed that “there must be thousands of people dead,” according to a spokeswoman for the aid group, Ms Sara Fajardo.

“He reported that it was just total disaster and chaos, that there were clouds of dust surrounding Port-au-Prince,” Mr Fajardo said from the group’s offices in Maryland.

State Department spokesman Mr P.J. Crowley said in Washington that embassy personnel were “literally in the dark” after power failed. — Agencies

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