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Earthquake Death Toll in Haiti Rises to 1,297

Fallecidos en Haití por el terremoto aumentan a 1,297

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Haitian authorities on Sunday raised to 1,297 the death toll from the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that devastated the southwest of the country on Saturday.

Civil Protection reported that 1,054 people died in the South department, another 122 in Nippes and 119 in Grand Anse, all provinces of the southwestern peninsula, while another 2 people died in the northwest of the country.

Authorities increased to 5,700 the number of people injured by the earthquake, which destroyed 13,694 houses and damaged 13,585 others, as well as numerous hospitals, schools and other buildings, according to figures provided by the Minister of Communication, Jean Emmanuel Jacquet, to local media.

The death toll almost doubles the figures in the bulletin issued on Sunday morning, when 724 people were reported dead.

The earthquake, which is already one of the ten deadliest earthquakes in Latin America in the last 25 years, was registered some 12 kilometers from the town of Saint-Louis du Sud, with a hypocenter at a depth of 10 kilometers, and was also felt in the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

The incident takes place in the midst of a difficult context for Haiti, which has been going through a delicate political and economic crisis since 2018, aggravated by the assassination, last July 7, of President Jovenel Moise, carried out —according to the investigations— by a commando of 26 mercenaries who broke into his residence in Port-au-Prince.

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