Haiti earth quake

Haiti capital earthquake death toll 'tops 150,000'

Hundreds of Haitians joined open-air church services in the capital
The confirmed death toll from Haiti's devastating earthquake has risen above 150,000 in the Port-au-Prince area alone, a government minister has said.
Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said the count was based on bodies collected in and around the capital by state company CNE.
Many more bodies remain uncounted under rubble in the capital, including the towns of Jacmel and Leogane.
The search for survivors has officially ended and the focus has shifted to aid.
But there is disagreement about how well the aid operation is doing, with the head of Italy's civil protection service making highly critical comments.
Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble - 200,000, 300,000?
Marie-Laurence Jocelyn LassegueCommunications Minister
Guido Bertolaso, who is in Haiti to co-ordinate relief efforts, also criticised what he saw as the presence of too many American soldiers.
He said they had no training in running a civilian relief operation.
"When there is an emergency, it triggers a vanity parade. Lots of people go there anxious to show that their country is big and important, showing solidarity", he said.
He called on the United Nations to establish a procedure to follow when major natural disasters occur.
As the death toll in Haiti has risen, it has become clear the 12 January quake is one of the worst natural disasters to have struck in recent years.
Some say the 7.0-magnitude quake killed as many as 200,000 people, while an estimated 1.5 million people have been left homeless.
Ms Lassegue said that the authorities were still far from knowing the total number of those killed.
"Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble - 200,000, 300,000? Who knows the overall death toll?" the Associated Press quotes her as saying on Sunday.
Speaking to reporters a day earlier, she said the general hospital had received about 10,000 corpses, which it had handed over to CNE for burial.
At least 75,000 people have been buried in mass graves since the disaster. Relatives have also burnt the bodies of some of the victims.
'Tremendous need'
Thousands of people joined open-air church services in Port-au-Prince, Leogane - the epicentre of the earthquake - and elsewhere on Sunday.
A day after the funeral of the capital's Roman Catholic archbishop, Father Glanda Toussaint celebrated Mass at an altar improvised on a wooden table by the wrecked cathedral.


source : bbc