Floods claim as many as 16 lives in Haitian city

Terra Daily via AFP: Flood waters inundated impoverished areas of Cap Haitien, Haiti's second largest city, killing as many as 16 people, including three children, city officials said Friday. "The city has been struck by disaster. There are many dead and major damage. All the populous areas are flooded," Cap Haitien Mayor Wilborde Beon told AFP by telephone.

Beon said many people had to be rescued and given shelter from the high waters, which swept through the northern city Thursday night amid heavy rains in the region. "The entrance to the city is completely flooded, all the rivers and ravines are swollen," he said, appealing for aid and support.

Preliminary estimates put the number of dead at 16, most of them when their homes collapsed in the flooding and heavy rains, the city's police chief, Kenel Pierre, told AFP. "Haitian police patrols found a number of bodies in the streets. We have seen the bodies of three children aged two or three," Pierre said...

The cross on Morne Jean, above Cap-Haitien. Shot by Rémi Kaupp, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license