100,000 estimated dead in Haiti quake: PM

The death toll in the Haiti quake could top 100,000, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said Wednesday after a after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the Island, toppling shantytowns and even the presidential palace.

The final death toll could be "well over 100,000," the prime minister told American television channel CNN after his Caribbean nation was struck by a 7.0 quake and several powerful aftershocks that rattled the poorest country in the Americas.

Injured residents of the crowded Caribbean capital poured into streets screaming in panic with each new tremor. Bodies were just left in the streets or crushed under rubble. Collapsing buildings left Port-au-Prince choked with cement dust for hours after the earthquake.

The quake toppled the cupola on the gleaming white presidential palace, a major hotel where 200 tourists were missing and the headquarters of the U.N. mission in Haiti where up to 250 personnel were unaccounted for.

"The building of the U.N. peace mission... collapsed and it would appear that all those who were in the building, including my friend (peacekeepers chief) Hedi Annabi... and that all those who were with him and around him are dead," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told RTL radio.

Annabi is the head of the 9,000-strong United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Brazil is the biggest contributor to the mission with 1,200 personnel.

From hundreds to thousands

Jordan reported that three of its peacekeepers were killed and 21 wounded in the quake, the most powerful to hit the country in more than a century.

Brazil said four of its peacekeepers were killed while eight Chinese soldiers were buried in rubble and 10 were missing, state media said.

Estimates of the death toll ranged from hundreds to thousands but with every hour passing it became clear that the destruction and loss of life was catastrophic.

A major international relief operation was set underway with the United States, France, Britain and other countries sending or promising to send help.

Two hundred foreigners were missing at the Hotel Montana, French Secretary of State for Cooperation Alain Joyandet said.

"We know there were 300 people inside the hotel when it collapsed, only around 100 have got out, which greatly concerns us," he told French radio.

A hospital in the suburb of Petionville collapsed, as did ministries, schools, homes in luxury districts and hillside shanties, businesses and markets.

Police, U.N. and Red Cross vehicles tried to ferry the wounded to hospital, but progress was slow as roads were torn up by the powerful ripples from the quake.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported 32 strong aftershocks hit the country in the hours after the initial 2153 GMT quake.

USGS geophysicist Susan Potter said the last earthquake of such magnitude to strike Haiti was in 1897, and possibly as far back as 1770.

We know there were 300 people inside the hotel when it collapsed, only around 100 have got out, which greatly concerns us

French official

War zone

An aid worker in Port-au-Prince described the city as looking like a war zone, with eight-story buildings collapsed into mounds of rubble.

"The scene was devastating.... People are in shock," communications director Magalie Boyer of aid agency World Vision told reporters on a conference call Wednesday.

"The center of Port-au-Prince has been destroyed, it's a catastrophe," wailed a man named Pierre, so traumatized he could hardly speak as he surveyed the disaster.

Haiti's ambassador to the United States, Raymond Alcide Joseph, described the quake to CNN as "a catastrophe of major proportions."

Haiti's ambassador to Mexico, Robert Manuel, said Haitian President Rene Preval and his wife "are alive and well" but did not provide further information.

The headquarters of the U.N. mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which has served as a peacekeeping mission since 2004, was destroyed. "There are numerous people underneath the rubble, both dead and injured," a local employee said.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon met top advisors Wednesday to decide how to respond to the emergency.

The scene was devastating.... People are in shock

World Vision official

Aid

Nations around the world offered aid and the United States, France, Canada and governments across Latin America geared to send help, while the international Red Cross mobilized relief supplies from Panama.

"My thoughts and prayers go out to those who have been affected by this earthquake," said U.S. President Barack Obama, who was to make an on-camera statement and get a new briefing on what he has promised will be an "aggressive, coordinated" U.S. effort following the disastrous earthquake.

Pope Benedict XVI urged a generous response to the catastrophe. The pope lamented Haiti's "tragic situation (involving) huge loss of human life, a great number of homeless and missing and considerable material damage."

Former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide, exiled in South Africa since his 2004 ouster, called it a "tragedy that defies expression."

World Vision said it would begin distributing first aid kits, blankets and potable water to survivors on Wednesday.

This "is especially devastating in Haiti, where people are acutely vulnerable because of poor infrastructure and extreme poverty," Edward Brown, World Vision's U.S. relief director, said in a statement.

Already the poorest nation in the Americas, Haiti has been hit by a series of recent disasters.

Three hurricanes and a tropical storm pounded Haiti in 2008, killing several hundred, while the country was also gripped by a political standoff that year amid riots over skyrocketing food prices. U.N. troops are a regular sight in the country.

My thoughts and prayers go out to those who have been affected by this earthquake

US President