Haiti earthquake death toll jumps to 1,297 as rescuers search rubble for survivors

Published

4 years ago

August 15, 2021

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Hospitals in Haiti have become overwhelmed as they treat thousands of people injured in a earthquake that has left 1,297 dead.

Some 13,694 houses have been destroyed, Haiti’s civil protection agency said, suggesting the number of dead could rise further.

Saturday’s 7.2 magnitude quake has left at least 5,700 people injured in the Caribbean nation, with thousands more displaced from their destroyed or damaged homes.

Authorities have been racing to bring doctors to the worst-hit areas before a major storm hits.

Rescue workers have been searching frantically to find survivors, and footage on social media shows civilians pulling distraught people from the debris of walls and roofs that had crumbled around them.

The epicentre of the quake was around 78 miles west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, the US Geological Survey said, and aftershocks continued to jolt the area on Sunday.

Schools, hospitals, hotels and churches have all been badly damaged and destroyed, while the walls of a prison were smashed open by the violent shudders.

The civil protection agency has said the hospitals that were still functioning are struggling to cope with the thousands of people who are injured.

Jerry Chandler, the head of Haiti’s civil protection agency, said: “We do have a serious issue.

“There are very important facilities that are dysfunctional as we speak and those that are functional are receiving an overflow of patients.”

Reports of overwhelmed hospitals come as the nation struggles to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The 11-million strong country received its first batch of US-donated COVID-19 vaccines last month.

In the northwestern city of Jeremie doctors treated injured patients on hospital stretchers underneath trees and on mattresses by the side of the road, as healthcare centres have run out of space.

In Les Cayes, a seafront town of some 90,000 people, rescuers in red hard hats and blue overalls pulled bodies from
the tangled wreckage of one building, as a yellow mechanical excavator nearby helped to shift the rubble.

Aftershocks could be felt throughout the day and night, with the island experiencing six stronger than magnitude 5 and more above 4 by early Sunday.

“We need to show a lot of solidarity with the emergency,” Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry said.

He said aid was being rushed to areas where towns were destroyed and hospitals overwhelmed with patients.

The prime minister declared a one-month state of emergency for the whole country.

“The most important thing is to recover as many survivors as possible under the rubble,” said Mr Henry.

“We have learned that the local hospitals, in particular that of Les Cayes, are overwhelmed with wounded, fractured people.”

Rescue efforts will be frustrated by the arrival of Tropical Storm Grace, which is set to lash the island nation with heavy rainfall on Monday.

The US National Hurricane Center also warned of the possibility of flash flooding.

Nearby countries, including the Dominican Republic and Mexico, rushed to send desperately needed food and medicines by air and across Haiti’s land border.

The United States dispatched vital supplies and deployed a 65-person urban search-and-rescue team with specialized
equipment, said Samantha Power, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Haiti is still rebuilding from a previous major quake 11 years ago and was recovering from the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July.

US President Joe Biden has authorised an immediate response and named USAID administrator Samantha Power to oversee the US relief effort.

Ms Power said the US has sent vital supplies and deployed a 65-person urban search-and-rescue team with specialised equipment.

Mr Biden said USAID would help to assess damage and assist in rebuilding and called the US a “close and enduring friend to the people of Haiti.”

Argentina and Chile have also said they will send help.

Some Haitians who remember the aftermath of the earthquake that struck in 2010 spent Saturday night sleeping in the streets.

That tremor struck closer to the capital, Port-au-Prince, and killed up to 300,000 people.

World

Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

Published

5 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

The targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four other colleagues by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) late on Sunday silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza.

The IDF wasted no time in releasing a statement claiming it had “eliminated” Al-Sharif, calling him a “terrorist” who “posed” as a journalist for Al Jazeera.

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The Committee to Protect Journalists warned in July that Al-Sharif was the victim of an Israeli smear campaign and that they feared for his safety.

The IDF had previously released documents which they say proved his involvement with Hamas.

No word from them on his colleagues – Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa – who they also killed. We are chasing.

Al-Sharif’s death – and that of his four colleagues – is a chilling message to the journalistic community both on the ground and elsewhere ahead of Israel’s impending push into Gaza City.

There will now be fewer journalists left to cover that story, and – if it is even possible – they will be that bit more fearful.

This is how journalists are silenced. Israel knows this full well.

It has also not allowed international journalists independent access to enter Gaza to report on the war.

Al-Sharif’s death has sent shockwaves across the region, where he was a household name. He was prolific on social media and had a huge following.

I was watching horrifying footage of the immediate aftermath of the strike in the taxi on my way into the bureau, and the driver told me how he and his family had all cried for Anas when the news came in.

His little daughter cried because of Al-Sharif’s little daughter, Sham, who she knew from social media.

“They call everyone Hamas,” my taxi driver said. “Men, women, children”.

Last month, Al-Sharif wrote this post: “I haven’t stopped covering [the crisis] for a moment in 21 months, and today I say it outright… and with indescribable pain.

“I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”

This is what journalists in Gaza are facing, every single day.

World

Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

11 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

World

Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

17 hours ago

August 10, 2025