Port-au-Prince quake death toll tops 150,000

THE confirmed death toll from Haiti’s devastating earthquake has topped 150,000 in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area alone, the communications minister said yesterday, with many more thousands dead around the country or still buried under the rubble.

Communications minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue told reporters that the figure is based on a body count in the capital and outlying areas by CNE, a state company that has been collecting corpses and burying them in a mass grave north of Port-au-Prince.

It does not include other affected cities such as Jacmel, where thousands are believed dead, nor does it account for bodies burned by relatives.