150,000 Haiti quake victims buried, says government

PORT AU PRINCE - Over 150,000 quake victims have been buried by the Haitian government, the country’s Communications Minister, Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, has said.

According to The Mirror, the buried total does not include those still under the debris in the capital Port-au-Prince, carried off by relatives or killed in the outlying quake zone.

“Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble - 200,000? 300,000? Who knows the overall death toll?” said Lassegue.

Meanwhile, a global army of aid workers was getting more food into people’s hands, but acknowledged falling short.

“We wish we could do more, quicker,” said UN World Food Programme chief Josette Sheeran, visiting Port-au-Prince.

The Haitian government was urging many of the estimated 600,000 homeless huddled in open areas of Port-au-Prince, a city of two million, to look for better shelter with relatives or others in the countryside.

Meanwhile, international experts are searching for sites to erect tent cities for quake refugees on the capital’s outskirts, but such short-term solutions were still weeks away, said the International Organisation for Migration, an inter-governmental agency. (ANI)