Haiti Earthquake Death Toll Raised To 230,000

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI (Catholic Online) -- Haiti's government has raised the death toll for the Jan. 12 earthquake to 230,000 from 212,000 and says more bodies remain uncounted.

The government initially estimated 150,000 dead on Jan. 24, apparently from bodies being recovered in the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince, the capital that was near the epicenter.

Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said Tuesday the government now counts 230,000 deaths.

But she says the new figure is not definitive. She says it does not include bodies buried by private funeral homes in private cemeteries or the dead buried by their own families.

The new figure gives the quake the same death toll as the 2004 Asian tsunami.

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