Haiti earthquake: '100,000 may be dead'
Updated on 13 January 2010
Haiti's President warns the scale of suffering is "unimaginable" and says thousands of people could be dead as a 7.0-magnitude earthquake quake devastates the country's capital.
Warning: the video report contains disturbing images
The earthquake is the most powerful to hit the region in 200 years, and it devastated large areas of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.
Its epicentre was just ten miles away.
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said he feared the death toll could top 100,000, while President Rene Garcia Preval said the scale of suffering was "unimaginable".
The Red Cross says up to three million people have been affected.
Among the buildings destroyed were the presidential palace, a five-storey United Nations headquarters, the offices of the World Bank and a number of hotels.
But the quake, and a series of after-shocks measuring magnitude 5.9, also brought down homes and hillside shanties across the region.
Channel Four News understands the United Nations Secretary-General's special representative Hedi Annabi, his deputy and many other senior UN peacekeepers have also been killed.
Rescuers at the UN compound have been struggling to reach others who were trapped during a high level meeting.
Mr Annabi was visiting a Chinese police delegation when the earthquake struck.
UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy, said fewer than ten people "some dead, some alive" have been pulled from the rubble of the five-story building.
Rescue efforts
President Barack Obama said he was mobilising an aircraft carrier, three surface ships and 2,000 marines to Haiti.
Rescue teams are flying out from Britain and elsewhere in Europe tonight.
Gordon Brown told MPs at Question Time in the Commons that Britain would send emergency aid. "Because of the devastating earthquake overnight, Haiti has moved to the centre of the world's thoughts and the world's compassion," he said.
"The Government will respond with emergency aid in firefighters, emergency equipment and finance. And we'll give further support to help the people of Haiti recover from this devastating event."
