Turkey expands aid efforts for Haiti

Turkey widened its efforts Sunday to help earthquake-devastated Haiti, as hard-working rescue teams clawed through the rubble of capital Port-au-Prince for the fifth straight day, continuing to drag out survivors even as the bodies piled up. The United Nations said it had never seen such a huge disaster. The Foreign Ministry announced over the weekend that Turkey had sent 10 tons of additional aid material to Haiti, bringing its total assistance to the poor Caribbean nation in wake of the quake to 50 tons. After three cargo planes carrying search-and-rescue teams, medical personnel and aid materials left Ankara for Haiti on Saturday, two more planes left Sunday for the island country, the ministry added. Turkey, which itself has lost tens of thousands of people in earthquakes, has also provided $1 million in financial aid to Haiti, the ministry said. Turkey announced earlier that it would dispatch a mobile hospital, two check-up devices, a 20-member relief team, 10 tons of medicine and medical equipment to the country. Though survivors are still being dragged out of the rubble, the true scale of the disaster is slowly beginning to emerge. Haiti's government alone has already recovered 20,000 bodies – not counting those recovered by independent agencies or relatives themselves, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said. The Pan American Health Organization now says 50,000 to 100,000 people perished in the quake. According to Bellerive, 100,000 would "seem to be the minimum."