By Ebi Kesiena
At least two people were killed in a 5.3-magnitude earthquake that shook southwestern Haiti, officials told AFP, with the tremor followed by several aftershocks.
In Anse-a-Veau, a small coastal town 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of the capital Port-au-Prince, a woman died when a wall collapsed. In Fonds-des-Negres, 20 kilometers further south, the second death was caused by a landslide.
In the Nippes district, where the epicentre of the quake hit, nearly 200 houses were destroyed and around 600 others damaged, according to the local civil protection directorate.
The ages of the two fatalities were not made public by the Haitian civil protection department. Rescue teams reported about 50 people were injured.
Recorded at 8:16 am local time (1316 GMT), the earthquake was felt in the capital and was followed by a dozen tremors, including an aftershock with a magnitude of 5.1 less than an hour later.
In August, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake killed over 2,200 people and destroyed or heavily damaged tens of thousands of homes in a nation still recovering from a devastating quake in 2010.
Downtown Port-au-Prince has still not been rebuilt twelve years after a catastrophic 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless.
