Red Cross: Up to 50.000 feared dead in Haiti

The Red Cross says between 45,000 and 50,000 people have been killed in Tuesday’s earthquake, with a further 3 million hurt or rendered homeless.

“The main figures have been given by the Haiti government, and they are talking about 40,000 to 50,000 people having been killed,” said Xavier Castellanos, head of the Americas zone of the International Federation of Red cross and Red Crescent Societies, AFP reported.

“The scale of this event means the toll will be high and the figure given by the government is likely the right one,” he added.

Haitian officials, however, had earlier warned the overall death toll could top 100,000, saying that three million people could have been affected by the powerful quake that ripped across the poorest nation in the Americas.

On Thursday, eyewitnesses said that around one thousand bodies were lying outside Port au Prince’s general hospital, with pick up trucks lining up to deliver more corpses to a morgue there.

The stench of death from decomposing bodies strewn in the streets hung over the capital of Port au Prince as residents hunkered down for another night in the open, traumatized by aftershocks triggered by Tuesday’s magnitude-7.0 earthquake.