Santo Doingo,  Dominican Republic —January 13, 2010- IR Summary/NYT - 

An earthquake estimated to be of magnitude of 7.0,  struck in Haiti  on early Wednesday and  made large numbers of people  trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings and leveled shantytown homes. No estimate yet, how many thousands are feared dead.

As per NYT, Governments and nongovernmental organizations around the world pledged their support and were racing to organize assistance to Haiti, but some groups with offices in Haiti’s capital were tallying their own casualties.

The French foreign minister said that the head of the United Nations mission in Haiti had been killed when the mission’s headquarters collapsed. The minister, Bernard Kouchner, told French radio stations that Hedi Annabi, the Tunisian head of the United Nations’ Haiti mission, and “all those who were with him and around him” were dead. Fourteen members of the United Nations cultural agency were reported missing.

The Brazilian Army, which has one of the largest peacekeeping presences in Haiti, said that four of its soldiers had been killed in the quake and five had been injured.
The quake caused the collapse of the National Palace, flattened countless shantytown dwellings and brought more suffering to a nation that was already the hemisphere’s poorest and most disaster-prone.

The earthquake was the worst in the region in more than 200 years and left the country in a shambles. In Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s densely populated capital, fires burned near the shoreline downtown, but otherwise the city fell into darkness.
In a place where there are constant blackouts, the electricity remained out during the early hours Wednesday, and telephones were not working.

It was not immediately clear how badly the Port-au-Prince airport had been damaged and whether it would be able to handle aircraft bringing relief aid from overseas.

In the chaos, it was not possible for officials to determine how many people had been killed and injured, but they warned that the casualties could be substantial.
Louise Ivers, the clinical director of the aid group Partners in Health, said in an e-mail to her colleagues: “Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. SOS. SOS . . . Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us.”

Alain Le Roy, the chief of U.N. peacekeeping forces, told The Associated Press in New York, “We know there will be casualties, but we cannot give figures for the time being.”

A hospital collapsed in Pétionville, a hillside district in Port-au-Prince that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians, a videographer for The Associated Press said. An American government official also reported seeing houses that had tumbled into a ravine. More