Haiti earthquake toll rises above 222,000: UN
February 24, 2010 |13:05 | News By : Team X
The death toll from Haiti's devastating earthquake has topped 222,500, the United Nations said, after President Rene Preval said the number could eventually reach 300,000.
Haiti's civil protection agency "estimates that 222,517 people died following the January 12 earthquake, an increase of 5,000 people since the last estimate given a week ago," the UN's humanitarian affairs coordination body said yesterday.
With the new figures, the earthquake toll surpasses the death toll of the 2004 Asian tsunami, widely held to be at least 220,000.
Preval said Sunday in an appeal for international aid at a summit of Caribbean leaders that the toll could reach 300,000 in what some experts say could be the worst natural disaster in modern history. Some 1.2 million were left homeless by the 7.0-magnitude quake.
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