More than 100,000 people may have died in last night's earthquake in Haiti, the Prime Minister of the impoverished country said this afternoon.
The earthquake destroyed the presidential palace, schools, hospitals and hillside shanties.
A five-storey U.N. headquarters building was also demolished by the 7.0 magnitude quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey said was the most powerful in Haiti in over 200 years. Many casualties were feared in the U.N. building.
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told Reuters that thousands of buildings had collapsed in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and said he believed the casualties would be "in the range of thousands of dead."
Soon after, however, Bellerive told CNN he believed well over 100,000 people could have died.
President Rene Preval called the damage "unimaginable" and described stepping over dead bodies and hearing the cries of those trapped in the collapsed Parliament building, where the senate president was among those pinned by debris.
"There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them," he told the Miami Herald. "All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe."
Sobbing and dazed people wandered the streets of Port-au-Prince, and voices cried out from the rubble.
"Please take me out, I am dying. I have two children with me," a woman told a Reuters journalist from under a collapsed kindergarten in the Canape-Vert area of the capital.
The presidential palace lay in ruins, its domes fallen on top of flattened walls. Preval and his wife were not inside when the quake hit.
GROUND STILL TREMBLING
The quake's epicenter was only 10 miles (16 km) from Port-au-Prince. About 4 million people live in the city and surrounding area. Many people slept outside on the ground, away from weakened walls, as aftershocks as powerful as 5.9 rattled the city throughout the night and into Wednesday.
The devastation crippled the government and the U.N. security and assistance mission that had kept order, and there were no signs of any organized rescue efforts.
Haitian Red Cross spokesman Pericles Jean-Baptiste said his organization was overwhelmed. "There are too many people who need help ... We lack equipment, we lack body bags," he told Reuters on Wednesday.
Reports on casualties and damage were slow to emerge due to communication outages.
In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said those unaccounted for at the U.N. mission headquarters included the chief of the mission, Hedi Annabi, but he could not confirm reports Annabi had died. He said 100 to 150 people were in the building when the quake struck.
Brazil's army said at least 11 Brazilian members of the U.N. peacekeeping mission were killed and many soldiers were missing.
The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is ill-equipped to respond to such a disaster, lacking heavy equipment to move debris and sufficient emergency personnel.
FLIMSY HOMES
"I am appealing to the world, especially the United States, to do what they did for us back in 2008 when four hurricanes hit Haiti," Raymond Alcide Joseph, Haiti's ambassador to Washington, said in a CNN interview.
"At that time the U.S. dispatched ... a hospital ship off the coast of Haiti. I hope that will be done again ... and help us in this dire situation that we find ourselves in."
U.S. President Barack Obama said his "thoughts and prayers" were with the people of Haiti and pledged "unwavering support."
Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said its three hospitals in Haiti were unusable and it was treating the injured at temporary shelters.
"The reality of what we are seeing is severe traumas, head wounds, crushed limbs, severe problems that cannot be dealt with with the level of medical care we currently have available with no infrastructure really to support it," said Paul McPhun, operations manager for the group's Canadian section.
In Geneva, U.N. officials said they expected the world body would issue an international emergency appeal for funds and other assistance, once needs on the ground had been assessed.
Germany was sending 1 million euros in immediate aid, and the EU's executive European Commission pledged 3 million Euros ($4.37 million) of fast-track funding.
The United States, Britain, Canada, France, Belgium, Sweden, Luxembourg and Netherlands were sending reconnaissance and rescue teams, some with search dogs and heavy equipment, while other government and aid groups offered tents, water purification units, doctors and telecommunications teams.
NOWHERE TO GO
The quake hit at 5 p.m. (11 p.m. in Malta), and witnesses reported people screaming "Jesus, Jesus" running into the streets as offices, hotels, houses and shops collapsed. Experts said the quake's epicenter was very shallow at a depth of only 6.2 miles (10 km), which was likely to have magnified the destruction.
Witnesses saw homes and shanties built on hillsides tumble as the earth shook, while cars bounced off the ground. "You have thousands of people sitting in the streets with nowhere to go," said Rachmani Domersant, an operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity.
Media reports said the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, has been found dead in the wreckage of the archdiocese office.
U.N. officials said normal communications had been cut off and the only way to talk with people on the ground was via satellite phone. Roads were blocked by rubble.
Some 9,000 U.N. police and troops are stationed in Haiti to maintain order and many countries were trying to determine the welfare of their personnel.
MALTA APPEAL
In Malta, the Civil Protection Department said it will collect provisions for the basic needs of victims of the disaster as well as the victims of flooding in Albania.
The collection will take place at the Humanitarian Aid Section of the Civil Protection Department at Shipwrights Wharf Marsa (behind Marsovin Ltd.) on Saturday and Sunday between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.
Monetary donations may be made in Bank of Valletta account 40018758443 and HSBC account 078-002391-050.
Another appeal was made for the Haiti victims by SOS Malta. Donations to SOS may be deposited at:
APS a/c 20000245111 HSBC a/c 006070932050 BOV a/c 40013974950
They can also be sent to - SOS Malta, 9, Camilleri Court in Testaferrata Street, Ta’ Xbiex XBX 1407 or made online www.sosmalta.org/donate_now