Haiti Quake Updates

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- More than 111,000 people died in last week's massive earthquake in Haiti, the government announced, even as it officially ended the search-and-rescue phase of its response to the disaster.

The government's figure, released by the United Nations late Friday, is the first precise death toll for the magnitude 7.0 quake that struck on January 12. It said 111,481 people were confirmed dead.

It is the worst death toll from an earthquake since the 2004 Asian tsunami, and the second-highest death toll from an earthquake in more than three decades, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Some 609,000 people have also been left homeless in and around the capital of Port-au-Prince, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

One returned to her Haitian roots, to give voice to women, honor their stories and shape their futures.

Another urged women to pack a courtroom in Haiti, where she succeeded in getting a guilty verdict against a man who battered his wife.

A third joined the others and helped change the law to make rape, long a political weapon in Haiti, a punishable crime.

Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin and Anne Marie Coriolan, founders of three of the country's most important advocacy organizations working on behalf of women and girls, are confirmed dead -- victims of last week's 7.0 earthquake.

And their deaths have left members of the women's movement, Haitian and otherwise, reeling.

"Words are missing for me. I lost a large chunk of my personal, political and social life," Carolle Charles wrote in an e-mail to colleagues. The Haitian-born sociology professor at Baruch College in New York is chair of Dwa Fanm (meaning "Women's Rights" in Creole), a Brooklyn-based advocacy group. These women "were my friends, my colleagues and my associates. I cannot envision going to Haiti without seeing them."

Myriam Merlet was until recently the chief of staff of Haiti's Ministry for Gender and the Rights of Women, established in 1995, and still served as a top adviser. She died after being trapped beneath her collapsed Port-au-Prince home, Charles said. She was 53.

Merlet, an author as well as an activist, fled Haiti in the 1970s. She studied in Canada, steeping herself in economics, women's issues, feminist theory and political sociology.

Doctors Without Borders reported that flights carrying critical medical equipment were being diverted to the neighboring Dominican Republic. Oxfam warned that fuel shortages could be on the horizon. And a volunteer at a hospital in northern Haiti said he has large numbers of open beds, but no way to get patients there from Port-au-Prince.

"My surgeons are sitting around looking at each other, wondering why they came," Tim Traynor told CNN.

While visiting the injured at a U.N. clinic in Port-au-Prince, Haitian President Rene Preval said his ravaged population -- already the Western Hemisphere's poorest -- needs medicine, food and long-term reconstruction assistance.

"The more we receive help, the more we can take care of them," he said.

Louis Belanger, a spokesman for Oxfam in Port-au-Prince, said many roads have been cleared of debris since the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on Tuesday. That has allowed trucks to deliver aid to parts of the capital and its suburbs that had been cut off by collapsed buildings.

But with thousands of tons of aid heading into Haiti, the airport in Port-au-Prince "can't handle all the aid that's coming through," Belanger said.

The disaster coverage veteran spoke to the Huffington Post Thursday by phone from Port-Au-Prince, and described the devastation surrounding him.

"It's certainly among the worst that a lot of us have seen," Cooper said, describing bodies piling up in the city. "Today I ran into a family who was carrying a casket through the streets and taking their daughter to the cemetery so I ended up just going w them to the cemetery. It's hard to describe what's going on in the cemetery in Port-Au-Prince. There are literally just bodies piled up. For people who can't afford a casket they're just dumped into crypts that have been previously occupied. They're dumping multiple bodies into one crypt and then just sealing it up. It's truly a pretty horrific situation."

Cooper said that while he feels "privileged" to be in Haiti — "There's something extraordinary happening here, something truly horrific, and I think it's important that people know what's happening here" — there are frustrating limits to what a TV camera can capture.

"The thing that's difficult about this is that the camera lens is too small to capture what is really happening here," he said. "It's too small to capture the scale, the size, the horror of what's happening here. It's a very tiny little camera lens, and no matter where you point it something is happening."

Cooper — who is traveling around the city unescorted by security — said he and his team figured out a way to get a vehicle upon arriving Wednesday morning, and have spent the last two days driving around Port-Au-Prince shooting stories. He described the Haitian people as strong but growing desperate.

"I think early on in a situation like this people are shocked and are just trying to figure out what comes next, and figure out how they can try to rescue their neighbors or rescue their loved ones," he said. "People are still digging for rubble on virtually every street in downtown Port-Au-Prince trying to find their friends or their neighbors or their family members. There is an increasing level of anger you hear from people in the streets, asking where's the relief, and what can we do for them and what are you doing. But that's completely natural and understandable.