More than 100,000 people were feared dead in Haiti Wednesday after a calamitous earthquake razed homes, hotels, and hospitals, leaving the capital in ruins and bodies strewn in the streets.
Schools collapsed, trapping the dead inside, and the cries of desperate victims escaped from flattened buildings in the center of the capital Port-au-Prince, which an AFP correspondent said was "mostly destroyed."
With thousands of people missing, dazed survivors in torn clothes wandered through the rubble as more than 30 aftershocks rocked the ramshackle capital, where more than two million people live, most in the grip of poverty.
Some injured survivors wore makeshift slings and blood-soaked bandages. One woman was carried on a bit of debris used as a stretcher, past piles of smashed concrete, from which crushed bodies protruded.
Fanning safety fears in the crime-hit capital, the United Nations said the main prison had collapsed, allowing some inmates to flee into a city where basic services and communications were shut down.
Casualty figures were impossible to calculate, but Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN the final death toll from the 7.0 quake could be "well over 100,000," as an international aid effort geared up in a race against time to pull survivors from the ruins.
"I hope that is not true, because I hope the people had the time to get out. Because we have so much people on the streets right now, we don't know exactly where they were living," Bellerive said.
"But so many, so many buildings, so many neighborhoods (are) totally destroyed, and some neighborhoods we don't even see people, so I don't know where those people are."
President Rene Preval painted a scene of complete destruction in his impoverished Caribbean nation after the quake struck on Tuesday.
"Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed," he told the Miami Herald, estimating the number of dead in the thousands.
"There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them," he said, as experts spoke of the worst quake to hit the disaster-prone nation in more than a century.
The earthquake was the latest tragedy to hammer Haiti, scarred by years of unrest, crime and political tumult.
"It is biblical, the tragedy that continues to stalk Haiti and the Haitian people," said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as she said she would shorten an Asian tour to deal with the crisis.
The quake late Tuesday struck just below the earth's surface on a notorious fault line, meaning the shock was intense and damage severe, scientists said.
With Haitian hospitals also having crumbled in the fury of the quake, medical services were struggling to cope with the flow of wounded.
There are "tens of thousands of victims and considerable damage," Haiti's ambassador to the Organization of American States Duly Brutus told AFP, without specifying the number of dead.
"The most urgent need is to help the thousands of people who are still alive and trapped in the ruins," he added, saying the last quake of such magnitude to strike Haiti was in 1842.
Preval's wife, First Lady Elisabeth Preval, told the Miami Herald she had seen bodies in the streets of Port-au-Prince and had heard the cries of victims still trapped in the rubble of the parliament building.
"I'm stepping over dead bodies. A lot of people are buried under buildings. The general hospital has collapsed. We need support. We need help. We need engineers," she said.
While much of the rest of the impoverished Caribbean nation appeared largely unaffected, the capital, bore the brunt of the devastation.
"There is no doubt that we are facing a major humanitarian emergency and that a major relief effort will be required," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon told reporters, as he prepared to visit Haiti as soon as possible.
The temblor toppled the cupola on the gleaming white presidential palace, a major hotel where 200 tourists were missing and the headquarters of the UN mission in Haiti.
The UN said up to 200 of its expatriate staff were still missing, and it was very worried about the fate of local workers.
Five people were confirmed dead in the UN headquarters, and the head of the peacekeeping mission, Tunisian Hedi Annabi, was among the missing.
Jordan reported that three of its peacekeepers were killed and 21 wounded in the quake. Brazil said 11 of its peacekeepers were killed while eight Chinese soldiers were buried in rubble and 10 were missing, state media said.
An Argentine-staffed hospital was the only one left operating in the city and was struggling to cope with huge numbers of injured, its director told Argentine television.
"The situation is really critical because we cannot cope with this many dead and injured," Daniel Desimone told Todo Noticias.
"There are a lot of dead people in the streets, a lot of injured," he added.
US President Barack Obama vowed a swift and aggressive effort to save lives and said search and rescue teams would arrive within hours after a "heart wrenching" earthquake.
"This tragedy seems especially cruel and incomprehensible," he said.
The US military mobilized ships, aircraft and expert teams due to arrive within hours to help the relief effort. An aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, was due Thursday.
Officials said the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, home to a controversial camp for terror detainees may also be used to house refugees.
Planeloads of rescue teams and relief supplies were quickly dispatched from nations including Britain, Canada, Russia, Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Russia.
The resort town of Jacmel was also devastated.
"I was driving back to Jacmel in the mountains when the entire mountain seemed to fall down all around me," said Emmet Murphy, local head of the US non-governmental organization ADCI/VOCA.
Two hundred foreigners were missing at the Hotel Montana, French Secretary of State for Cooperation Alain Joyandet said.
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