Stunned Haiti waits for help
The people of Haiti were tonight still reeling from the earthquake that killed thousands of them and left the fate of millions more hanging on aid supplies.
Bodies were piled up in the streets of the capital Port-au-Prince which was virtually destroyed. Meanwhile survivors tried to dig out the untold numbers still trapped under rubble.
Aftershocks continued to rattle the city of two million as people covered in dust clawed out of debris, wailing. Others wandered the streets stunned and holding hands. Thousands gathered in public squares to sing hymns.
A massive international aid operation was gathering, but almost 24 hours after the magnitude 7.0 quake hit, the Haitians were mostly on their own.
Haiti's main prison was among the collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince.
A UN spokeswoman said some of the inmates had escaped.
The United Nations said up to 100 people were missing in the rubble of the collapsed UN headquarters building and other UN offices in Haiti's earthquake-devastated capital, including the mission chief.
UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said "less than 10" people have been pulled out of the five-storey headquarters of the UN peacekeeping mission, and he could confirm "less than five" deaths.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday's "catastrophic earthquake" has devastated the capital of the Western hemisphere's poorest country and the death toll "may be in the hundreds or even thousands".
UN humanitarian chief John Holmes told a news conference this afternoon "initial reports suggest a high number of casualties" but the UN has no reliable estimate.
The full scale of the disaster in one of the world's poorest countries was still unclear, communications were virtually wiped out along with the buildings.
"Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed," President Rene Preval said.
The International Red Cross said a third of Haiti's nine million people may need emergency aid and that it would take a day or two for a clear picture of the damage to emerge.
The United Nations said the capital's main airport was "fully operational" and that relief flights would begin today.
In the capital people pulled bodies from collapsed homes, covering them with sheets by the side of the road. Passers by lifted them to see if loved ones were underneath.
The prominent died along with the poor: the body of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, 63, was found in the ruins of his office.
Countries from Iceland to Venezuela said they would start sending aid workers and rescue teams to Haiti.
Many will have to help their own staff as well as stricken Haitians. Taiwan's Foreign Ministry said its embassy was destroyed and the ambassador hospitalised. Spain said its embassy was badly damaged.
"Haiti has moved to centre of the world's thoughts and the world's compassion," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.
Tens of thousands of people lost their homes as buildings that were flimsy and dangerous even under normal conditions collapsed. Nobody offered an estimate of the dead, but the numbers were clearly enormous.
"The hospitals cannot handle all these victims," Dr. Louis-Gerard Gilles, said as he helped survivors. "Haiti needs to pray. We all need to pray together."
Even relatively wealthy areas were devastated.
In Petionville, a hillside district home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians, trapped people screamed for help from inside a wrecked hospital.
At a destroyed four-storey apartment building, a girl of about 16 stood on a car, trying to peer inside while several men pulled at a foot sticking from rubble. She said her family was in the building.
The UN's 9,000 peacekeepers in Haiti, most of them from Brazil, were distracted from aid efforts by their own tragedy: Many spent the night hunting for survivors in the ruins of their headquarters.
Brazil's army said at least 11 of its peacekeepers were killed, while Jordan's official news agency said three of its peacekeepers were killed. A state newspaper in China said eight Chinese peacekeepers were known dead and 10 were missing.
The quake struck at 4.53pm, centred 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince, the strongest since 1770 in what is now Haiti.
Most Haitians are desperately poor, and after years of political instability the country has no real construction standards. In November 2008, following the collapse of a school in Petionville, the mayor of Port-au-Prince estimated about 60% of buildings were shoddily built and unsafe in normal circumstances.
With electricity knocked out in many places and phone service erratic, it was nearly impossible for Haitian or foreign officials to get full details of the devastation.
"Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Henry Bahn, a US Department of Agriculture official visiting Port-au-Prince.
