Tens of thousands of people were feared dead and many were believed to be still trapped alive in the rubble of the major 7.0 magnitude quake that hit Haiti's capital on Tuesday.
   
There were no signs of organized operations to rescue those trapped in debris or remove bodies and doctors in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, were ill-equipped to treat the injured.
   
Survivors feared returning to their precarious homes and slept in open areas where groups of women sang traditional religious songs in the dark and prayed for the dead.
   
"They sing because they want God to do something. They want God to help them. We all do," said Hotel Villa Creole employee Dermene Duma, who lost four relatives.
   
Foreigners slept around the hotel's pool and scores of injured Haitians lay outside the damaged hotel.
   
Tens of thousands wandered dazed and sobbing in the chaotic, broken streets of Port-au-Prince the day after the earthquake, hoping desperately for assistance.
   
Bodies were visible all around the hilly city: under rubble, lying beside roads, being loaded into trucks. Scattered bodies were laid out on sidewalks, wrapped neatly in sheets and blankets. Voices cried out from the rubble.
   
Residents tried to rescue people trapped under rubble, clawing at chunks of concrete with bare hands. Men with sledgehammers battered at slabs of debris in collapsed buildings searching for survivors.
   
One young man yelled at reporters in English: "Too many people are dying. We need international help ... no emergency, no food, no phone, no water, no nothing."
   
Asked by a CNN reporter how many people had died, Haitian President Rene Preval replied, "I don't know ... up to now, I heard 50,000 ... 30,000." He did not say where the estimates came from.
   
Nations around the world pitched in to help. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Thursday French planes would evacuate 60 injured people from its one-time colony and fly them to Martinique for treatment.
   
"Our three planes will leave with 60 injured people and take them to Martinique. I believe they will be the first people to be evacuated," he told France Inter Radio, adding that others would be flown out at a later date.
   
The United Nations, whose five-story headquarters in Port-au-Prince was destroyed, said at least 16 members of its 9,000-strong peacekeeping mission, including 11 Brazilian soldiers, had been killed. Preval said mission chief Hedi Annabi was dead but the world body could not confirm that.
   
Preval called the damage "unimaginable" and described stepping over dead bodies and hearing the cries of those trapped in the collapsed Parliament building, where the Senate president was among those pinned down by debris.

Source: Reuters