The death toll from Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake was more than 316,000, prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive said today, raising the figures from previous estimates on the first year anniversary of the disaster.
"There were over 316,000 people killed," Mr Bellerive told a news conference in Port-au-Prince of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission which he co-chairs with former US president Bill Clinton.
Previous estimates from Haitian authorities had put the quake dead at around 250,000.
Haiti is commemorating the anniversary of its 2010 earthquake as leaders defended the criticised international response and unveiled ambitious investment plans.
Kicking off two days of remembrance of the January 12th disaster yesterday, President Rene Preval laid a wreath on a dusty hill marked with black crosses just north of the capital Port-au-Prince where mass graves contain crushed and mutilated bodies of tens of thousands of hastily buried quake dead.
"We remember you, we will never forget you," Mr Preval said, accompanied by his wife Elisabeth and members of his cabinet.
Lines of hundreds of black-painted wooden crosses covered the site, where two banners proclaimed in Haitian Creole: "January 12, we will never forget." A larger black cross overlooks the location.
The anniversary of a disaster that many experts call the biggest urban catastrophe in modern history is going ahead amid a barrage of criticism over Haiti's slow recovery and reconstruction, despite billions of dollars of international donations and aid pledges.
President Barack Obama, while hailing the leading US role in "one of the largest humanitarian efforts ever attempted", acknowledged that helping the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation to recover would take years if not decades.
"Still, too much rubble continues to clog the streets, too many people are still living in tents, and for so many Haitians progress has not come fast enough," Mr Obama said in a statement marking the anniversary of the quake.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton called for renewed international efforts to help Haiti "build back anew".
More than 800,000 survivors are camped out under tents and tarpaulins in the rubble-jammed Haitian capital, and delays in debris-clearing and resettlement have prompted questions about the effectiveness of the huge aid operation.
"Look, nobody's been more frustrated than I am that we haven't done more," said former US president Bill Clinton, the United Nations special envoy to Haiti who co-chairs an Interim Haiti Recovery Commission with outgoing Haitian prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive.
"But I'm encouraged if you look at how much faster it's been going in the last four months," Mr Clinton told reporters at a debris-clearing site in Port-au-Prince.
Mr Clinton said he hoped faster progress could be made this year with resettling tens of thousands of homeless survivors. "Housing is always the thing people want most, next to a job, and always the thing that takes the longest," he said.
The former president added his voice to appeals for a solution to the dispute triggered by chaotic presidential and legislative elections held in Haiti on November 28th. Street riots and fraud allegations greeted the December 7th preliminary results.
Reuters