PETION-VILLE, Haiti (AFP)--Rescuers uncovered a classroom full of dead students early Saturday after searching through the night for survivors of a school collapse in a Haitian shantytown that killed at least 82 people.
The three-story building caved in Friday morning during class, destroying neighboring homes and leaving scores of students and teachers trapped beneath huge slabs of cement and twisted steel rods. Some 107 were injured.
As many as 700 students aged between three and 20 attended the church-run school on the outskirts of the capital Port-au-Prince, though it was unclear how many were inside when the building came crashing down.
As the death toll continued to rise, Haitian President Rene Preval warned that there was no telling how many more bodies might be found.
"This morning we found a classroom with 21 inside - students and their professor - and they are all dead," said Preval, who along with Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis had rushed to the scene to oversee the rescue effort.
"Right now we cannot say how many bodies we will have because the work is not yet finished."
At the time of the collapse, builders had been adding a new floor atop the La Promesse school in Petion-ville, officials said.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 08, 2008 10:52 ET (15:52 GMT)

Publié le 08 novembre 2008 Copyright © 2008 Dowjones