Stunned rescuers in Haiti pulled out a man still alive after an amazing 12 days under the rubble, as vast and desperate crowds clamored for more earthquake relief on Tuesday.
The latest survivor was not buried by the 7.0-magnitude quake that struck on Jan. 12 but two days later, perhaps by one of the massive aftershocks common in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
“He was buried in the rubble for 12 days. The man had a broken leg and severe dehydration,” said a statement from the US military who found the man in a collapsed Port-au-Prince building, on the aptly named Rue de Miracles.
The 31-year-old, who emerged covered in dust, survived on small amounts of water and was said to be amazingly well considering his ordeal under the rubble — the longest of any Haiti quake survivor so far.
Meanwhile, a stung US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended the US’ role in the relief operation from charges of heavy-handed incompetence, as US officials backed plans to cancel Haiti’s debt and consider easing immigration rules.
The capital Port-au-Prince was rattled by two new tremors, two weeks after the deadly earthquake that killed at up to 200,000 people, scaring weary and destitute people out of their improvised beds in makeshift camps.
“We just can’t get used to these quakes. Each aftershock is terrifying and everyone is afraid,” trader Edison Constant said.
The US Geological Survey has warned the beleaguered Caribbean nation to expect tremors for the next month.
In the Cite Soleil slum, several thousand desperate people converged on a walled police compound to receive sacks of relief supplies, surging against the steel gates as officials struggled to let them in one by one.
Across the city, ad hoc street committees have hung imploring banners in English and French — “SOS”, “We need help here” and “We need food and water” — in desperate attempts to attract aid agencies’ attention.
With its helicopters in constant rotation overhead and foot patrols increasingly in evidence in the city, the US military has assumed a dominant role in the aid operation and has been largely welcomed by Haitians.
However, Clinton was forced to defend the operation from criticism that it had been badly coordinated with other states’ and agencies’ efforts and had been heavy-handed in the immediate chaotic aftermath of the quake.
“I deeply resent those who attack our country, the generosity of our people and the leadership of our president in trying to respond to historically disastrous conditions after the earthquake,” Clinton said in Washington.
Some 20,000 US troops have been sent to Haiti to distribute food and water.
The international relief effort has been hampered by traffic congestion and lingering security fears, and has yet to get enough aid into the capital and flattened towns near the quake’s epicenter.
With the port only recently reopened, the hub of the aid operation remains the airport.
Donor nations and aid organizations have warned that rebuilding the country will take at least a decade.
Haitians, who lived with decades of political upheaval and bloodshed, fear the new-found international interest in their plight could soon fade.
A top officer said the US military could start rolling back its relief operation within three to six months.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema