**Thousands of Haitians are spending a second night in the open after the country’s catastrophic earthquake which may have killed tens of thousands.**Medical aid agency Medecins sans Frontieres reported a “massive influx” of casualties at its makeshift clinics, many of them with severe injuries.
The search for survivors under the rubble went on after darkness.
Substantial foreign aid for the three million people said to be in need is due to begin arriving within hours.
The first US aid planes have already landed at the airport serving the capital, Port-au-Prince, and US naval ships are on the way.
EYEWITNESS
Matthew Price, BBC News, HaitiTwenty-four hours after the earthquake, and we flew into Port-au-Prince. Just along the tarmac we found some aid trickling in. The airport buildings here have been damaged but not, it seems, the runway.Many of those who can, are leaving. Millions, though, are left behind in a country that can barely function, even without a disaster.
The leadership here says 100,000 have been killed. Many of the UN peacekeepers stationed here are also among the dead. This country - so often forgotten by the world - now needs its help more than ever.
EU states, Russia and China are among those sending rescue and medical teams by plane while pledges of aid have been made by countries around Latin America.
UN peacekeepers, who played a key role in maintaining public order in Haiti even before the quake, have been deployed to control any outbreaks of unrest as reports come in of looting.
With many key buildings destroyed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s fragile government infrastructure has been paralysed, says the BBC’s world affairs correspondent, Humphrey Hawksley.
Stream of injured
The 7.0-magnitude quake, Haiti’s worst in two centuries, struck at 1653 local time (2153 GMT) on Tuesday, just 15km (10 miles) south-west of Port-au-Prince and close to the surface.
The energy released was the equivalent of about half a megaton of TNT, according to Professor Roger Searle, of the earth sciences department at the UK’s Durham University.
The energy release of many nuclear warheads is about one megaton of TNT.
Patients with “severe traumas, head wounds, crushed limbs” have been streaming into MSF’s temporary structures but the agency is only able to offer them basic medical care, spokesman Paul McPhun told reporters in Toronto.
One of MSF’s emergency medical facilities collapsed during the quake while the other two were so badly damaged they became unusable, he said.
At least 1,000 people have sought help at three temporary MSF sites, including some 50 people who were treated for burns caused by domestic gas containers exploding in collapsing buildings.
Hans van Dillen, an MSF worker in Port-au-Prince, reported that there were “hundreds of thousands of people who are sleeping in the streets because they are homeless”.
“We see open fractures, head injuries,” he said on MSF’s website. “The problem is that we cannot forward people to proper surgery at this stage.”
The aid agency, which is concerned about the welfare of many of its 800 local employees and their families, said it was dispatching 70 more international aid workers to Haiti to bolster its team.
Correspondents say the streets of the Haitian capital are littered with dead bodies, covered in blankets.
Efforts to rescue survivors trapped in rubble continued after darkness fell on Wednesday but there is little heavy lifting equipment available and much of the work is being done by individuals with simple tools or their hands.
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