As rescue teams and aid groups rush to help the injured and displaced — and to tend to the dead — after Tuesday’s devastating earthquake in Haiti, officials from the Caribbean nation estimated Wednesday that the number of casualties could exceed 100,000, even by a large margin. –KA

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CNN:

“Port-au-Prince is flattened” after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the Haitian capital, Haiti’s consul general to the United Nations said Wednesday.

“More than 100,000 are dead,” Felix Augustin told reporters.

The hospitals are gone, he added, and medical supplies and heavy equipment are desperately needed.

The Haitian prime minister said Wednesday several hundred thousand people may have died in the powerful earthquake.

“I hope that is not true, because I hope the people had the time to get out,” Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN.

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