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An earthquake victim from the city of Les Cayes is taken to an ambulance at the airport in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince
Photo: Fernando Llano / dpa
The severe earthquake in Haiti killed more than 700 people.
724 bodies have now been recovered, the civil protection agency announced on Sunday after the 7.2 magnitude quake struck the Caribbean state on Saturday morning.
More than 2,800 people were injured.
The search for missing people continues.
The tremors caused severe damage.
Countless buildings collapsed, including a multi-storey hotel in the city of Les Cayes, which is near the epicenter around 160 kilometers southwest of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
The rescue workers searched the rubble of collapsed buildings for survivors and possible other victims.
Pictures show collapsed houses, hotels, schools and churches.
People are buried under it, reported an eyewitness from Les Cayes, one of the largest cities in the country, to the online portal "Haiti Press Network".
Several children were reportedly killed in a church while a baptism was being held.
Few hospitals, the security situation is precarious
However, there are only a few hospitals in the region affected by the quake.
The Ministry of Health dispatched personnel and medicines, but relief efforts were hampered by the precarious security situation in Haiti.
The only road connection to the disaster region is through the Martissant slum in Port-au-Prince, where criminal gangs took control at the beginning of June.
The full extent of the destruction will probably only become apparent in the course of the salvage work in the next few days.
"One thing is very clear, we are in the midst of a humanitarian emergency," said Leila Bourahla, country director of the children's aid organization "Save the Children" in Haiti.
Haiti's Prime Minister Ariel Henry obtained an overview of the situation by helicopter.
He declared a one-month state of emergency in the four administrative districts affected by the quake and appealed to the population to "show solidarity".
The next possible danger is already approaching: Tropical storm "Grace" is on its way towards Haiti.
This could additionally hinder the rescue work.
According to the US weather service, "Grace" should reach Haiti on Monday and cause heavy rains and flash floods.
"It could hit the same areas that were hit by the earthquake," warned the International Red Cross, which is involved in search and rescue work in the particularly affected region.
The US offered emergency aid.
It makes him "sad" that Haiti was hit by an earthquake in an already difficult time, said President Joe Biden.
According to him, the US wants to help rescue the injured and rebuild.
Several Latin American countries as well as Spain have promised to provide rapid aid.
More than 250 Cuban doctors, who are already helping the country in the fight against the coronavirus, prepared a Covid hospital in Port-au-Prince to treat seriously injured victims.
International aid organizations, including ISAR Germany and the Federal Association of Rescue Dogs, have also announced their support.
Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka, whose father is Haitian, announced that she would donate proceeds from an upcoming tournament in Cincinnati to earthquake relief.
“It really hurts to see all the destruction wreaking havoc in Haiti right now,” she wrote on Twitter.
The earthquake was even stronger than the January 2010 quake that killed more than 200,000 people in Haiti.
Around 1.5 million people became homeless at the time.
Haiti - the poorest state in the region - has not yet recovered from the consequences of the quake at the time.
In addition, the country is regularly hit by cyclones.
The region in southern Haiti, which is the center of the new quake, was hit hard by Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
More than 500 people died at that time.
Haiti slipped even deeper into the crisis due to the corona pandemic, the increase in gang crime - and most recently the murder of President Jovenel Moïse at the beginning of July.
kfr / dpa / AFP