United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday said that hundreds are feared dead or injured after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake shattered Haitian capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday. "We are yet to establish the number of dead or injured, which we fear may well be in the hundreds," Ban said to reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York. The U.N."s peacekeeping headquarters in the capital was one of several buildings that collapsed and the head of the U.N."s peacekeeping mission there, Tunisian diplomat Hedi Anabi, is still unaccounted for, Ban said. The quake hit shortly after 5 in the evening local time when Anabi was meeting with a Chinese delegation. Some 150 to 200 U.N. staff were still at organization"s headquarters when the quake hit and most are still unaccounted for. Fewer than five have been conformed dead, he said. There are more than 9,000 peacekeepers stationed in Haiti as well as almost 2,000 civilian staff supporting the mission there. Peacekeepers were patrolling the impoverished city throughout the night, the U.N. chief said. Ban presented "heartfelt sympathies" to the government and people of Haiti and urged the international community to rush assistance to the impoverished nation in the Caribbean, where 90 percent of the population live on less than $1 a day. He said the earthquakes would trigger a major humanitarian crisis in addition to cutting off communication lines with the outside world. Ban said it had become "very, very difficult" to get in touch with U.N. personnel in Port-au-Prince. Ban is dispatching Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Edmund Mulet to Haiti as soon as possible to get a first-hand look at the situation.
