An earthquake killed at least four people and injured 36 on Tuesday, June 6, in western Haiti, announced a local branch of Civil Protection, while the country is already plagued by floods that have caused death. of at least 42 people. Three of the deceased “are members of the same family and were killed because of the collapse of their house”told AFP Christine Monquélé, head of Civil Protection in the department of Grand’Anse.
“We are saddened by the loss of human life, the destruction, as well as by the suffering of the Haitian population caused by the earthquake”commented in New York Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
The earthquake, of magnitude 4.9 according to the American Institute of Geophysics (USGS), occurred shortly after 5 a.m. local time (11 a.m. in Paris) at a depth of 10 km and about 9 km from the coasts in the southwestern peninsula of this Caribbean country regularly hit by destructive earthquakes.
The southwestern peninsula had already been devastated in August 2021 by a powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.2 which killed more than 2,200 people and caused the destruction of more than 130,000 homes. In 2010, a magnitude 7 earthquake killed more than 200,000 people in the country. The earthquake had transformed the capital Port-au-Prince into a field of ruins and put 1.5 million people on the streets.