Prime News Ghana

Over 100 killed as Hurricane hits Haiti

By Jeffrey Owusu-Mensah
Residents in Les Cayes, Haiti repairing their home after the devastation
Shares
facebook sharing button Share
twitter sharing button Tweet
email sharing button Email
sharethis sharing button Share

Hurricane Matthew -the most powerful Caribbean storm in nearly a decade- has left 108 people dead in Haiti, the interior minister has said.

According to AFP news agency, a local official says 50 people had died in the southern town of Roche-a-Bateau alone.

New images from remote and cut off areas in the south-west of the country show scenes of devastation.

The hurricane has again been upgraded to a Category Four storm, the second highest hurricane classification, as it heads for the US state of Florida.

Hurricane Matthew is currently pounding the Bahamas, after slicing through Haiti and Cuba.

Haiti has seen some of the worst of the devastation, with reports of at least one town in the south virtually wiped out.

An earlier death toll given by Haiti's civil protection service stood at 23, but as emergency services gained access to some of the more remote areas on Thursday, the number rose rapidly to more than 100.

"The whole southern coast of Haiti, from the town of Les Cayes to Tiburon, is devastated," Pierre-Louis Ostin told the AFP news agency.

Aerial images from the south-western town of Jeremie show hundreds of homes flattened.