Haitians leaving wrecked capital for tent cities

Haitians began an exodus away from their quake-wrecked capitalyesterday amid government promises of refuge in safe, clean tent cities.

Aid workers said 200,000 people crammed into buses, nearly swamped ferries and set out on foot to escape Port-au-Prince, which was devastated by last week's earthquake and was this week hit by a barrage of aftershocks.

For those who stayed, engineers started levelling land for tent cities, supposedly temporary, that are meant to house 400,000 people.

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The goal is to halt the spread of disease at hundreds of impromptu settlements that have no water and no place for sewage.

Homeless families have erected tarpaulins and tents, cardboard and scrap as shelter from the sun but they will be useless once the rainy season hits.

Armies of foreign aid donors turned their attention to expanding their pipeline of food, water and medical care for survivors.

With extensive swathes of Port-au-Prince in ruins, more than 500 makeshift settlements with a population of about 472,000 are scattered around the capital.

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The US Agency for International Development said that as many as

200,000 Haitians have fled and many more are trying to do so. It suggests that at least 100,000 people have fled to Gonaives, a city of about 280,000 that itself is still recovering from back-to-back hurricanes in 2008.

Haiti estimates the quake killed 200,000 people. It said 250,000 were injured and two million made homeless.

The disaster has prompted what the Red Cross calls the greatest

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deployment of emergency responders in its 91-year history. "We are planning to flood the country with food," Myrta Kaulard, country director of the UN World Food Programme, said.

Rescue crews from across the globe have also started to leave, as the massive effort to find survivors became one to recover the dead. But one eight-year-old boy, incredibly pulled from the rubble alive, yesterday spoke of his escape. Kiki Joachin – whose beaming grin has come to represent hope in the effort to find survivors – emerged with his arms outstretched in delight after spending more than a week buried in the ruins of his home.

He was saved on Wednesday with his sister, Sabrina, 10, but his siblings were killed in the disaster – Yeye, nine, Titite, three, and 18-month-old Didine.

Speaking of the moment he was pulled out of the wreckage in Port-au-Prince, he said: "I smiled because I was free – I smiled because I was alive."

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Asked how he managed to survive without food and water, he said: "God helped me."

More than 130 people were saved from the earthquake debris by overseas workers but Thursday was thought to be the first day since the January 12 quake that no one was pulled out alive.

Donations by Britons to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal topped 42m as fundraising efforts continued.

A cover of REM's haunting ballad Everybody Hurts is to be released as a Live Aid-style Haiti charity single, featuring the likes of singer

Leona Lewis, boy band JLS and veteran rocker Rod Stewart.

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Rare memorabilia donated by bands like Coldplay and the Arctic Monkeys has earned thousands in an online auction on eBay to help generate

funds for Oxfam's emergency response.

Woman rescued 10 days after disaster

A 69-year-old woman was fighting for her life last night after being pulled from the rubble 10 days after Haiti's earthquake.

The doctor treating her said she was in bad condition and might not survive.

Dr Ernest Benjamin said: "There is very little hope, but we are trying to save her life."

Doctors were treating her at Haiti's General Hospital after she was freed from the rubble in Port-au-Prince yesterday morning, giving her oxygen and intravenous fluids.