PORT-AU-PRINCE: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew into Haiti on Saturday carrying relief supplies as the US poured in massive aid four days after the earthquake that local officials say killed up to 200,000.
Haiti’s shell-shocked government gave the United States control over its main airport to bring order to aid and food flights from around the world and speed up relief to the impoverished Caribbean nation.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah sent a cable of condolences to Haiti’s President Rene Preval on the deaths caused by the earthquake. The king also sent condolences to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon over the casualties among the UN staff. Crown Prince Sultan, deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, also sent similar cables of condolences to Preval and Ban, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
The devastated Haitian capital was rocked Saturday by a strong 4.5-magnitude aftershock. The 10-km deep aftershock struck just 25 km from Port-au-Prince, the US Geological Survey said. Over 30 aftershocks have shaken the devastated nation since Tuesday’s 7.0-magnitude temblor.
Clinton’s plane brought in supplies and was to return with evacuated Americans. “We will also be conveying very directly and personally to the Haitian people our long-term unwavering support, solidarity and sympathies,” Clinton said.
US President Barack Obama, flanked by his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, said the two former presidents would lead a national drive to raise money for Haiti’s earthquake survivors.
Trucks piled with corpses have been carrying bodies to hurriedly excavated mass graves outside Port-au-Prince, but thousands of bodies still are believed buried under rubble.
US rescuers worked through the night to dig out survivors from one collapsed supermarket where as many as 100 people could have been trapped inside. They were about to give up, when they were told a supermarket cashier had managed to call someone in Miami to say she was still alive inside.
“We have already collected around 50,000 dead bodies,” Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime told Reuters. “We anticipate there will be between 100,000 and 200,000 dead in total, although we will never know the exact number.” Some 40,000 bodies had been buried in mass graves, said Secretary of State for Public Safety Aramick Louis.
Health Minister Alex Larsen told Reuters three-quarters of the capital will have to be rebuilt. Three days after the quake, gangs of robbers had begun preying on survivors living in makeshift camps on streets strewn with debris and decomposing bodies. Scores of police were on the streets of downtown Port-au-Prince on Saturday, rounding up looters in the biggest security presence since the earthquake struck.
Despite complaints over coordination, vital supplies and medicines were trickling into the nation. Hampered by a lack of infrastructure and a government that admits it is no longer able to function properly, the relief effort has been slow to get into gear while the fate of whole towns and villages remains unclear.
In a sign of growing unease, barricades of burning tires, rubble and human corpses blocked the main road out of the Haitian capital to nearby Carrefour on Saturday as residents called for piles of decomposing bodies to be removed.
“They already took some bodies away, but there are more, many more,” said bystander Charles Weber, a 53-year-old voodoo priest, in the crowd of at least three dozen protesters surrounding the smoldering roadblock.
