Indian peacekeepers in Haiti safe, says CISF

Eleven United Nations(U.N.) peacekeepers were killed on Wednesday as the strongest earthquake in more than 200 years jolted Haiti. Officials said the 141-strong Indian contingent in the Caribbean nation is safe.

Eight Chinese and three Jordanian peacekeepers were killed and hundreds others are unaccounted for including the Tunisian force chief as a 7.3-magnitude trembler shook the country, flattening almost all buildings in the capital Port-Au-Prince.

All the 141 Indian police peacekeepers from the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), who are based in the capital which was worst hit are safe, according to the CISF spokesperson Rohit Katiyar at the force headquarters in New Delhi.

He said a part of the outer perimeter wall of the building in which Indian contingent is housed fell down, but the main structure remain intact. India is still awaiting information about 50 other Consular level officers.

“Since we got the first information, we have been trying to establish contact with our Consulate there.....

There are about 50 Consular level officers. We are awaiting information about them,” External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said in New Delhi.

U.N. headquarters at Port-Au-Prince collapsed in the quake and Tunisian head of the peacekeepers is missing. “The peacekeeping force building collapsed. For the moment we have no news from the 200 to 250 people in the building. We don’t know how many were still there at 5 a.m. local time when the quake occurred,” Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman of an U.N. agency said in Geneva.

She said the buildings, housing the UNICEF and World Food Programme (WFP) have survived the quake and aftershocks.

Several unaccounted

According to the U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy large number of U.N. personnel are unaccounted for. The U.N. has 9,000 peacekeepers in the country which include over 7,000 soldiers and 2,000 policemen.

Besides the eleven dead, 21 Jordanian soldiers were reported wounded and 10 Chinese peacekeepers were missing.

The Indian contingent was inducted in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in October 2008 to help with international efforts to ensure a safe environment in Haiti.

The Indian peacekeepers are involved in managing public disturbances, establishing checkpoints, tracking criminals and anti-crime operations.

The U.N. Security Council extended MINUSTAH through mid-October 2009, recognising the impact that the civil disturbances in April 2008 and the devastating hurricane season have had on the country’s stability.