United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has confirmed that the head of the UN peace mission in Haiti, the Tunisian Hedi Annabi, is dead. His body was recovered from under the rubble of the mission's headquarters in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. He was 65.

Like many Port-au-Prince buildings, the UN headquarters was totally destroyed in Tuesday's earthquake. Mr Annabi's deputy, Luiz Carlos da Costa, from Brazil, has also been found dead.

Emergency relief workers are still finding it difficult to get supplies to the survivors of the quake. Haiti's infrastructure has been largely destroyed, making it difficult to treat the injured and to distribute the supplies arriving at Port-au-Prince airport.

A UN spokesman in Geneva says this aspect makes the disaster worse than the tsunmai which hit Asia in 2004. Official figures from the Haitian government show 20,000 bodies have so far been recovered. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive believes at least 100,000 people have died.

The International Red Cross is putting the probable death toll at between 45,000 and 50,000. It appears likely that about one and a half million people have lost their homes.

photo: Hedi Annabi (EPA)