PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti - January 17, 2010 - Haitians sought comfort in their faith Sunday, flocking to pray in church ruins as rescue teams raced against time to pull out any final survivors five days after a devastating earthquake.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon flew in to assess what he called the "most serious humanitarian disaster in decades," while security degenerated in the capital with police killing a man as they fired on looters ransacking a market.
The leading U.S. general on the ground warned that 200,000 might be a reasonable "start point" for the eventual death toll, but said it was still too early to predict a figure that might never be accurately known.
"Clearly, this is a disaster of epic proportions, and we've got a lot of work ahead of us," said Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, who is running the vast U.S. military relief operation in the stricken Caribbean nation.
Haitian officials and the Red Cross have said around 50,000 people perished in the quake, but this figure could be conservative as tens of thousands of rotting bodies have already been buried, many in mass graves.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon flew in to assess what he called the "most serious humanitarian disaster in decades," while security degenerated in the capital with police killing a man as they fired on looters ransacking a market.
The leading U.S. general on the ground warned that 200,000 might be a reasonable "start point" for the eventual death toll, but said it was still too early to predict a figure that might never be accurately known.
"Clearly, this is a disaster of epic proportions, and we've got a lot of work ahead of us," said Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, who is running the vast U.S. military relief operation in the stricken Caribbean nation.
Haitian officials and the Red Cross have said around 50,000 people perished in the quake, but this figure could be conservative as tens of thousands of rotting bodies have already been buried, many in mass graves.