New York Times:
Calling the death toll "unimaginable" as he surveyed the wreckage, Haiti's president, René Préval, said he had no idea where he would sleep. Schools, hospitals and a prison were damaged. Sixteen U.N. peacekeepers were killed, at least 140 U.N. workers were missing, including the chief of its mission, Hedi Annabi.
And the poor who define this nation were in the streets, some hurt and bloody, many more without food and water, close to piles of covered corpses and rubble. Limbs protruded from disintegrated concrete, and muffled cries emanated from deep inside the wrecks of buildings — many of them poorly constructed in the first place — as Haiti struggled to grasp the unknown toll from the quake.
"Please save my baby!" Jeudy Francia, a woman in her 20s, shrieked outside the St. Esprit Hospital in the city. Her child, a girl about 4 years old, writhed in pain in the hospital's chaotic courtyard, near where a handful of corpses lay under white blankets. "There is no one, nothing, no medicines, no explanations for why my daughter is going to die."
The death toll could be anywhere between 30,000 and 50,000. "We are still struggling to learn the full extent of the devastation from yesterday’s earthquake," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday. "Casualties can not yet be estimated but they are certain to be heavy."... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
