Death toll from Haiti earthquake climbs to 1,900

The death toll from Haiti’s devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake has climbed to 1,941, the country’s civil protection agency said Tuesday.

More than 9,900 people are injured in the earthquake that struck Saturday morning.

The quake, which was felt in Cuba and Jamaica and followed by a string of aftershocks, struck about 5 miles from the town of Petit-Trou-de-Nippes, just more than 90 miles west of the capital, Port-au-Prince, at a depth of about 6 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The humanitarian organization UNICEF said Tuesday that an estimated 1.2 million Haitians have been affected, including 540,000 children, and that more than 84,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed.

Adding to the misery and complicating response efforts, Haiti was lashed by torrential rains and heavy winds from a tropical storm, Grace, Monday and Tuesday.

“Countless Haitian families who have lost everything due to the earthquake are now living literally with their feet in the water due to the flooding,” Bruno Maes, UNICEF’s representative in Haiti, who is in the hard-hit area of Les Cayes, said in a statement.

Haiti is considered to be the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Before the earthquake, it was struggling with gang violence, the assassination of its president Jovenel Moïse and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The United States and the United Nations have pledged help and support.

The U.S. Coast Guard has been flying critically injured patients to Port-au-Prince for higher levels of care and providing other aid. More than 60 urban search and rescue team members from the U.S. have arrived, and the U.S. military has sent helicopters, officials said.

Hospitals and health care facilities in the area lack supplies and are short on staff, the U.S. Agency for International Development said.

Adding to the challenge, humanitarian organizations have reported the main highway from Port-au-Prince was impassible because of organized crime-related security concerns, USAID said.