Haiti quake death toll to rise

The Haitian prime minister warns that the death toll from last month’s fatal earthquake is likely to rise, saying the figure has now reached 212,000.

“The last number I received from my services was 212,000 people that were collected on the streets and different places,” Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN Thursday.

On January 12, a 7.0-magnitude quake rattled Haiti’s capital city of Port-au-Prince, demolishing many buildings and leaving more than one million homeless.

Bellerive added recovery crews are pulling bodies from locations where demolition had been delayed so that rescue teams could search for survivors.

On Wednesday the premier announced that the death toll had topped 200,000.

Meanwhile, Haitian police say they have arrested 100 of the 4,000 inmates who escaped from the capital’s main prison after the quake.

“They have already captured 100 of them around the country,” police Spokesman Frantz Lerebours was quoted as saying by AFP.

All 4,000 of the prison’s inmates escaped amid the chaos of quake, Lerebours said. He could not say if they were suspected of committing further crimes since then.