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Destroyed road after the tremors
Photo: Delot Jean / AP
A severe earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 shook the Caribbean state of Haiti on Saturday morning.
Numerous fatalities and great destruction were feared, but the exact extent is still unclear.
The Haitian Civil Protection said 29 confirmed victims.
Local media reported several dead and destroyed buildings, especially in the south of the country.
Haiti's Prime Minister Ariel Henry declared a state of emergency for a month.
The tremors could be felt across the country, authorities and residents reported severe damage to homes and buildings.
According to residents of the coastal town of Jérémie, just a few kilometers from the epicenter, the roof of the cathedral there collapsed.
Serious damage was also reported from the port city of Les Cayes.
A multi-story hotel is said to have collapsed there.
Several aftershocks were also registered.
According to the US authority USGS, the earth shook several times in the region on Saturday with strengths of up to 5.2.
The US Agency for Development Cooperation (USAID) wrote on Twitter that disaster experts were on site to assess the damage.
The country director of Welthungerhilfe, Annalisa Lombardo, told the dpa that the hospitals were overwhelmed by the onslaught of the injured.
The US National Weather Service (NOAA) initially issued a tsunami warning after the current quake - but canceled it a short time later.
However, he advised people to remain cautious.
The US agency USGS declared a red alert with a view to possible deaths: This means that a high number of victims is possible.
It also drew parallels to the 2010 earthquake. This occurred only around 75 kilometers to the east on the same peninsula.
Eyewitnesses tell of people buried under rubble
The destruction caused by the current quake is still largely open.
The "Gazette Haiti" reported that many houses had been destroyed, as can also be seen on photos and videos on social networks.
Whole parts of houses and walls collapsed.
An eyewitness from Les Cayes in the southwest, one of the largest cities in the country, told the Haiti Press Network that houses and hotels had collapsed and that people had been buried under the rubble.
The newspaper "Diario Libre" from the Dominican Republic published a video of the alleged moment when the earth shook in Haiti on Saturday morning.
Haiti's Prime Minister Ariel Henry condoned on Twitter: "I extend my condolences to the parents of the victims of this violent earthquake which has cost several lives and caused property damage in various provinces," he wrote.
220,000 people died in the 2010 quake
Haiti's densely populated capital, Port-au-Prince, was at the center of the earthquake of similar strength in 2010.
Around 222,000 people died and more than 300,000 were injured as a result of the quake.
More than a million people lost their homes.
The damage from the quake was estimated at eight billion US dollars (6.2 billion euros).
Reconstruction got off to a slow start, also due to the political instability.
The US agency USGS also referred to a strong earthquake that occurred on Saturday off the south coast of the US state of Alaska.
It had shaken the region with a magnitude of 6.9.
"Despite the temporal coincidence between these two earthquakes, the long distance between these two events makes a causal relationship unlikely," the agency wrote.
sol / dpa / Reuters / afp