The 7.0-magnitude quake struck at 4:53 p.m.
United Nations officials said they could not account for a large number of UN personnel.
Karel Zelenka, a Catholic Relief Services representative in Port-au-Prince, told US colleagues before phone service failed that “there must be thousands of people dead,’’ according to a spokeswoman for the aid group, Sara Fajardo.
“He reported that it was just total disaster and chaos, that there were clouds of dust surrounding Port-au-Prince,’’ Fajardo said from the group’s offices in Maryland.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington that US Embassy personnel were “literally in the dark’’ after power failed.
“They reported structures down. They reported a lot of walls down. They did see a number of bodies in the street and on the sidewalk that had been hit by debris. So clearly, there’s going to be serious loss of life in this,’’ he said.
The Diocese of Norwich, Conn., said at least two Americans working at its Haitian aid mission were believed to be trapped in rubble.
Alain Le Roy, the UN peacekeeping chief in New York, said late last night that the headquarters of the 9,000-member Haiti peacekeeping mission and other UN installations were seriously damaged.
Felix Augustin, Haiti’s consul general in New York, said a portion of the National Palace had disintegrated.
“Buildings collapsed all over the place,’’ he said. “We have lives that are destroyed. . . . It will take at least two or three days for people to know what’s going on.’’
An Associated Press videographer saw a hospital in ruins in Petionville, a hillside Port-au-Prince district that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians, as well as many poor people. Elsewhere in the capital, a US government official reported seeing houses that had tumbled into a ravine.
