Three dead, several injured in Haiti quake

An earthquake shook parts of western Haiti on Tuesday, killing at least three people and injuring more than two dozen others, civil protection authorities said.

The magnitude 4.9 quake occurred in the isolated Grand’Anse department nearly 300 kilometers (185 miles) west of Port-au-Prince, at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers, according to the US Geological Survey.

“As a partial toll, we have already recorded three deaths. They are members of the same family and were killed when their house collapsed,” Christine Monquele, head of Civil Protection in Grand’Anse, told AFP Tuesday.

Monquele’s office also counted 28 injured, she said, adding that the search for “other possible casualties” was ongoing.

The quake comes just days after heavy storms battered Haiti — the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere — leaving at least 42 people dead and 11 others missing, according to the Civil Protection services.

It struck shortly after 5:00 am (0900 GMT) just off the coast of the southwestern peninsula of the Caribbean nation which is regularly hit by destructive earthquakes.

In 2010 a massive 7.0 quake killed more than 200,000 people in Haiti, turning the capital Port-au-Prince into ruins and making 1.5 million people homeless.

In August 2021 the southwest peninsula was ravaged by an even stronger, 7.2 magnitude quake that killed more than 2,200 people and destroyed 130,000 homes.