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Haitians are pulling the dead out from newly-formed rubble in the country’s capital city, following a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake that leveled buildings, left tens of thousands of people homeless and plunged the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere into disarray.

Recent developments

* Haitian archbishop killed in quake
* Canada, U.S., pledge assistance to Haiti
* UN peacekeeping headquarters collapses

Injured Haitians sat on the city’s darkened streets Wednesday, pleading for help, while untold numbers of people remained trapped within tons of rubble that piled up the day before. Clouds of dust thrown up by falling buildings choked the capital city for hours.

People pulled bodies from collapsed homes, leaving them covered with sheets at the side of the road. Passerby lifted the sheets to see if loved ones were underneath.

International Red Cross spokesperson Paul Conneally said an estimated three million people — one-third of the country’s entire population — may have been affected by the quake, though it will take a day or two for a clear picture of the damage to emerge.

World leaders pledged to fast-track assistance to Haiti, with the intention to send aid workers and rescue teams there to assist in a major emergency operation.

In Ottawa, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Canadian officials worked through the night to deploy Canada’s aid resources. A reconnaissance force from the Disaster Assistance Response Team is already en route.

The United States, and countries from Iceland to Venezuela, also pledged their assistance to Haiti.

In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama called the images coming out of Haiti “truly heart-wrenching.”

“Haiti has moved to centre of the world’s thoughts and the world’s compassion,” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.

Timeline

The disaster struck Tuesday afternoon, centred about 15 kilometres west of the capital city. U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Kristin Marano called it the strongest earthquake since 1770 in the area that is now Haiti.

By early Wednesday, casualty reports started to trickle in. Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, was confirmed to be among the dead and Hedi Annabi, the head of the UN peacekeeping mission, was unaccounted for.

The headquarters for the UN peacekeeping mission collapsed in Tuesday’s disaster, as did the ornate National Palace. The country’s ambassador to Mexico, Robert Manuel, said Haitian President Rene Preval and his wife had survived, despite the collapse of their state home.

The president later gave a statement on the chaos in Port-au-Prince.

“Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed,” President Rene Preval told The Miami Herald. “There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry reported that its embassy in Port-au-Prince had been completely destroyed and the ambassador hospitalized. Spain said its own embassy was badly damaged.

It is believed that tens of thousands have lost their homes as a result of the quake, which Dr. Louis-Gerard Gilles, a former senator, said will leave Haitian hospitals overwhelmed.

“The hospitals cannot handle all these victims,” Dr. Louis-Gerard Gilles, a former senator, said as he helped survivors. “Haiti needs to pray. We all need to pray together.”

The first quake struck Port-au-Prince at 4:53 p.m. local time on Tuesday. For the next eight hours, a mishmash of sporadic cellphone calls, text messages and pictures posted online formed the early reports on the quake.

It was felt in the Dominican Republic, though no major damage was reported there. Similarly, houses shook in eastern Cuba, though no significant damage was reported.

With files from The Associated Press