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.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees