Thousands missing in Haiti quake

• Former presidents to join relief effort as UN says 150 of its staff unaccounted for

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Thursday

Troops and planeloads of food and medicine trickled in to Haiti today to aid a traumatised nation still rattled by aftershocks from the catastrophic earthquake that flattened homes and government buildings and buried countless people.

The Haitian Red Cross said it believed 45,000 to 50,000 people had died and 3 million more were hurt or left homeless by the major 7.0 magnitude quake that hit Haiti’s capital on Tuesday. Many people were believed to be still trapped alive in the rubble.

The number of UN military and police officials confirmed to have been killed in the Haiti earthquake now stands at 22, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

Speaking to reporters at UN headquarters in New York, Ban also said that around 150 UN staff remain unaccounted for. He added that he had no news about the fate of the head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti, Hedi Annabi of Tunisia.

Haitian President Rene Preval said on Wednesday that Annabi was dead. But UN officials later cast doubt on his remarks, saying they had no information to confirm it.

Mr Annabi was in the five-story UN peacekeeping mission’s headquarters in Port-au-Prince when it collapsed during the earthquake, which struck at 5 pm on Tuesday. UN officials said he is among those trapped in the rubble and it is not clear if he is alive or dead.

Mr Ban said that UN humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes would issue a flash appeal, probably on Friday afternoon, for emergency funds for Haiti, although it was unclear how much the United Nations would ask donors to provide.

Hundreds of bodies lay outside Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital, as pick-up trucks piled with corpses continued to deliver the dead from the earthquake to a morgue there, an eyewitness said today.

A Reuters reporter estimated the bodies lying outside the hospital morgue could number 1,000 or more.

In Washington, President Barack Obama said he had dispatched US troops and ships to Haiti to assist in earthquake rescue and recovery efforts and told the Haitian people, “You will not be forsaken.”

Mr Obama said in a televised statement that the United States would spend $100 million for immediate relief efforts from the earthquake. At the same time, officials close to former President George W. Bush said that he and former President Bill Clinton, who is already a United Nations special envoy for Haiti, had agreed to help the quake relief effort.

One source familiar with the situation said President Obama had talked by phone with Mr Bush on Wednesday night about helping out.

Mr Clinton and Mr Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, joined in a huge international relief effort to help the recovery from the 2004 tsunami that swept South Asia and killed 226,000 in 13 countries after an earthquake in Indonesia.

Obama, facing the biggest test of international relief since taking office a year ago, said he had directed his administration to launch “a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives and support recovery in Haiti.”