Golden Genius Garden

Haitian President Rene Preval has said thousands of people are feared dead following a huge quake which has devastated the country's capital.

ေဟတီ ငလွ်င္ ၁၀၀၀၀၀ ခန္. ေသဆုံး

Mr Preval said the UN mission chief in Haiti was among the dead, but the UN cannot confirm this. It said 14 other UN staff had died and 56 were injured.

The 7.0-magnitude quake, Haiti's worst in two centuries, struck on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told US network CNN he believed more than 100,000 people had died.

The Red Cross says up to three million people are affected.

The capital's Catholic archbishop, Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, is also among those killed.

In his first interview since the earthquake, President Preval told the Miami Herald newspaper in the US he feared thousands of his people had died.

Describing the scene in the capital as "unimaginable", he said: "Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed.

There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them."

Mr Preval later said that Hedi Annabi, the Tunisian head of the UN stabilisation mission in Haiti (Minustah), had died after the UN HQ building was destroyed.

The UN said it could not confirm the news but that Mr Annabi had been in the building at the time and was likely to be under the rubble, along with many others.

The main prison in Port-au-Prince has also collapsed, with a UN humanitarian spokeswoman saying there had been reports of escaped inmates.

A number of nations, including the US, UK and Venezuela, are gearing up to send aid.

Speaking in Washington, US President Barack Obama vowed "unwavering support" for Haiti after what he called a "cruel and incomprehensible" disaster।

I've come across two schools that have completely collapsed, you could see the bodies trapped inside - but there were no rescue teams on the ground. I haven't seen anyone in the two days I've been here.

Haitians are still digging through the rubble with their hands. The bodies are beginning to build up, both on the streets and in public spaces.

There are no coffins here, no arrangements for burials. There is no sense that the promised relief efforts have begun in earnest.