At least two men were killed on Monday (January 24th) in a 5.3 magnitude earthquake that shook southwestern Haiti, the Haitian civil protection department told AFP.
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In Anse-à-Veau, a small coastal town 130 km west of the capital Port-au-Prince, a woman died after a wall collapsed. In the town of Fonds-des-Nègres, 20 km further south, the second death was caused by a landslide. The age of the victims has not yet been made public by the director of Haitian civil protection, Jerry Chandler. Rescue teams present in the affected areas report several minor injuries and damage to at least thirty-five houses in Anse-à-Veau, a town located 3km from the epicenter according to the Institute for Geological Studies of the States. States USGS.
Recorded at 8:16 a.m. (1:16 p.m. GMT), the earthquake was felt as far away as the capital and was followed by around ten tremors, including an aftershock of magnitude 5.1 less than an hour later.
The southwestern peninsula of Haiti had already been devastated on August 14 by a powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.2 which killed more than 2,200 people and caused the destruction of more than 130,000 homes.