Tag: Afternoon Edition

The move underlined the impotence of the Haitian government in the wake of the 7.0-magnitude January 12 quake that killed an estimated 170,000 people and left many official buildings, including the presidential palace, in ruins.

“The electoral council has decided to postpone the legislative elections of February 28 and March 3, 2010, to a later unspecified date,” the authorities announced on Tuesday, giving no further details.

Justice officials said the 10 Americans behind the alleged abductions might have to be tried in the United States because of post-quake chaos which also led the government on Tuesday to delay legislative elections indefinitely.

“The parents now are coming to the village to reclaim their children,” said Heather Paul, the CEO of SOS Children’s Villages USA, the aid group now caring for the children.

Amid growing concern over the safety of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable women and children left destitute after the January 12 quake, the case could also go to trial in the US courts.

Mazar Fortil, interim prosecutor for the main Port-au-Prince court, told AFP the group may also face a lesser charge of criminal conspiracy.

A vast foreign aid effort is struggling to meet survivors’ needs 17 days after the disaster, which killed around 170,000 people and left one million homeless and short of medicine, food and water.

Several medical teams reported increased cases of diarrhea in the last few days in Haiti, Paul Garwood, a spokesman for the UN World Health Organization, said in Geneva.

“We just can’t get used to these quakes. Each aftershock is terrifying and everyone is afraid,” trader Edison Constant said after the aftershocks struck in quick succession around dawn, two weeks after the quake.

“I hid under my bed,” added iron merchant Julien Louis, exhausted by a stream of some 50 aftershocks since the devastating 7.0-magnitude quake on January 12.

Nearly two weeks after the worst recorded disaster in the Americas killed at least 150,000 people, a conference of foreign creditors in Montreal heard that it would take at least 10 years to rebuild the stricken Caribbean nation.

As bulldozers cleared more corpse-filled buildings in the center of the flattened capital Port-au-Prince, Haitians expressed both hope and skepticism about the emergency meeting of donor countries in Montreal.

US forces also slowly reopened the main port to bring in huge aid shipments, with international assistance finally gathering pace 10 days after the disaster killed at least 75,000 people and left 500,000 homeless.

A televised benefit hosted by George Clooney and featuring performances from Wyclef Jean, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna and others was, meanwhile, set to be screened on US networks and streamed live on Internet sites.

In a bid to move an estimated 500,000 left destitute by the January 12 quake, the Haitian government said it was seeking to relocate them out of squalid, stinking tent cities into housing outside Port-au-Prince.

“The government has made available to people free transportation. A large operation is taking place: we’re in the process of relocating homeless people,” said Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime.

The 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck at 6:03 am (1103 GMT) Wednesday, eight days after the Haitian capital was leveled by a massive temblor in which at least 75,000 people were killed, and a million left homeless.

“All Haitians are going to die because they are cursed,” said one mother now camping amid the squalor of the Port-au-Prince rubble where countless bodies still lie buried.

In a spectacular move, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne division landed in at least four choppers to secure the ruined presidential palace, a once elegant white building now surrounded by a stinking, squalid refugee camp.

From the palace, a 100-strong squad of soldiers headed on foot to the city’s general hospital, swamped with injured after the catastrophic 7.0-magnitude quake seven days ago, which the Haitian government says killed at least 70,000.

Despite the massive international effort spearheaded by the United States, security fears grew as television pictures showed troops in combat gear firing off rounds and hauling looters to the ground in the capital Port-au-Prince.

The Red Cross warned that violence by desperate Haitians was growing, although Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, the top US officer on the ground, insisted: “The level of violence we see now is below pre-earthquake levels.”

“As long as the people are hungry and thirsty, as long as we haven’t fixed the problem of shelter, we run the risk of riots,” warned Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim, after a visit to the capital Port-au-Prince.

UN officials on the ground pleaded for more medical and food aid for survivors, amid estimates that some three million people — a third of the population — had been affected.