'90% destroyed' as Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti areas

At least 877 people are known to have been killed by Hurricane Matthew in Haiti, with aid officials saying up to 90% of some areas have been destroyed.


Haiti is one of the world's poorest countries, has never fully recovered from the earthquake in 2010 that killed thousands of people and a cholera epidemic that followed.

Hurricane Matthew has now made landfall in South Carolina in the US, having battered Florida on Friday, Parts of Haiti's south had faced "complete destruction," and there are fears more bodies will be found.

One of the survivors in the village of Chantal, Jean-Pierre Jean-Donald told Reuters a tree had flattened his house.

He said, "The entire house fell on us. I couldn't get out, People came to lift the rubble, and then we saw my wife, who had died."

Kate Corrigan, a nurse working with charity Innovating Health International in Port-au-Prince, told the BBC "some small towns were almost inaccessible".

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) has downgraded it to a Category 1 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds having decreased to 75mph (120km/h). Has warned of a "serious inland flooding event unfolding, the storm is due to hit North Carolina later".

Rescue efforts are under way in Haiti to assess the destruction left in the wake of the most powerful Caribbean storm in a decade.

US President Barack Obama on Friday warned that, while southern Florida had been spared the worst, the hurricane remained very dangerous, with the risk of a storm surge and flooding.

A state of emergency is in place in several states and at least three million inhabitants have been ordered to evacuate their home