Saturday, September 21

Haiti raises the death toll from the 7.2 earthquake to 1,297


Haití eleva a 1,297 la cifra de muertos por el terremoto de 7.2 grados
It grows to more than a thousand deaths in Haiti after an earthquake of 7.2 degrees.

Photo: Richard Pierrin / Getty Images

The Haitian authorities raised to 1, 297 the death toll from the magnitude 7.2 earthquake

that devastated the southwest of the country on Saturday.

Civil Protection reported that 1, 054 people died in the department of the South, others 122 in Nippes and 119 in Grand Anse, all of them provinces of the peninsula southwest, while another 2 people died in the northwest of the country.

The authorities increased this Sunday to 5, 700 those injured by the earthquake, which destroyed 13, 694 houses and caused damage to others 13, 585, as well as numerous hospitals, schools and other s buildings, according to figures provided by the Minister of Communication, Jean Emmanuel Jacquet, to local media.

The death toll almost doubles the figures in the bulletin offered on Sunday morning, when they had been counted 724 deceased.

The earthquake, which is already part of the ten most lethal earthquakes of the last 25 years in Latin America , it was recorded at about 12 kilometers from the town of Saint-Louis du Sud, with a hypocenter of 10 kilometers deep, and was also felt in the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

The incident occurs in the midst of a difficult context for Haiti, which has been going through since 2018 due to a delicate political and economic crisis, aggravated by the assassination, on July 7, of President Jovenel Moise , in charge – according to the investigations – of a command of 26 mercenaries who broke into his residence in Port-au-Prince.

With information from Efe.

Continue Reading: The drama in the Les Cayes hospital after the strong earthquake in Haiti