At least 1,297 people were killed and some 5,700 injured in a devastating earthquake that struck Haiti this weekend, aggravating the crisis of an increasingly chaotic country whose president was assassinated last month and where a coming tropical storm threatens even more devastation.
Most of the fatalities from Saturday’s 7.2 magnitude quake occurred in the country’s southern peninsula, said Jerry Chandler, head of Haiti’s civil-protection agency. More than 13,000 buildings in the area were destroyed, including churches, hospitals and at least two hotels, he said.
“People are crying in the streets, the walls of homes have collapsed. It is the worse experience a person could live through,” said Linda Caracolis, a resident in the outskirts of the town of Jeremie. “People have lost their homes, their families. For the moment, we are on our own.”
The fatality count was expected to rise as Haitians frantically searched for hundreds of…
