Haiti earthquake death toll may hit 200,000

"We have already collected around 50,000 dead bodies," Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, Haiti's interior minister told Reuters. "We anticipate there will be between 100,000 and 200,000 dead in total, although we will never know the exact number."

Around 40,000 bodies have been buried in mass graves.

The estimated 300,000 people made homeless by the quake began a fourth night sleeping on the streets on Friday, along with many others who fear returning to their homes in case of further collapses.

Aid workers from as far afield as China, France, Iceland and Venezuela are among those already deployed on the ground in Haiti.

Although doctors, rescue teams and supplies had been flying into the capital, Port au Prince, a series of bottlenecks meant aid was not getting to those who needed it most.

Rescuers have been told to stop work when it gets dark because of fears they will be attacked.

"Our biggest problem is security," said Delfin Antonio Rodriguez, rescue commander for the Dominican Republic. "Yesterday they tried to hijack some of our trucks. Today we were barely able to work in some places because of that. There's looting and people with guns out there, because this country is very poor and people are desperate."

The US plans to send 10,000 US troops to Haiti to help distribute aid and prevent potential rioting among survivors, Mike Mullin, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said.


In an attempt to address some of the problems facing aid delivery, the US was given on Friday "senior airfield authority" of Haiti's main airport under an agreement between the state department and the Haitian government.

Lieutenant-General Philip Breedlove, the US air force deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements, said that the agreement is in effect for the next 72 hours. The agreement means the US will "schedule and control" flights in and out of the airport, deciding what planes can land and in what order.

The USS Carl Vinson, with 19 helicopters onboard, also arrived off Haiti on Friday, opening a second significant channel to deliver help. The helicopters immediately began ferrying water and other supplies into Haiti. 

The first supply ship also reached Port-au-Prince's severely damaged port bringing a cargo of bananas and coal from the town of Jeremie, about 200km away. Bananas will provide local residents with necessary food while coal will help boil water to avoid the spread of disease.

Charities have managed to set up several field hospitals, and 17 search and rescue teams were picking through the rubble of collapsed buildings with sniffer dogs. Most Haitians, however, are still having to use their bare hands to search for survivors.

An appeal to help victims of the earthquake is breaking all records, fuelled by the power of social media. Type "Haiti" into Twitter, Facebook or Youtube and you soon encounter a message from @redcross sent at 05:38 GMT on Jan 13. In less than 48 hours, the American Red Cross had received more than $35m in donations - including $8m directly from texts.

"This breaks all world records for a mobile giving campaign," says their spokeswoman, Gloria Huang. "It's been incredible. People have donated more to Haiti than to Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami in Asia.

U.N. aid agencies will launch an emergency appeal to raise for about $550 million to help survivors of the earthquake in Haiti, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Friday.

"The reality is that getting the quantities of supplies, equipment and expertise that are so desperately needed on the ground inevitably takes time," U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes said in a statement. The world body also said it was looking at converting the national soccer stadium in Port-au-Prince into a field hospital and at setting up collective kitchens for the homeless.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said it was drawing up plans to feed two million people for a month.

The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said "thousands" of people were waiting for surgical treatment. The UN was looking at the possibility of using the national soccer stadium in Port au Prince as a base for a giant field hospital.

Some of the wounded, including Spain's ambassador to Haiti and some staff from the US embassy, were taken to the nearby US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba – site of the controversial prison camp for terrorism suspects – for medical treatment.