Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

MANILA - Filipino peacekeepers who rushed to a school that collapsed in Haiti Friday were using their bare hands to pull out victims buried in the rubble, the Philippine Mission to the United Nations said.

"Filipino Blue Berets were the first to arrive at the scene and immediately went to action, using their bare hands to roll over concrete slabs and dig through the rubble in their bid to pull out both the living and the dead," Ambassador Hilario G. Davide, Jr., Philippine Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said in his report to Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto G. Romulo.

About 50 schoolchildren and teachers were killed when the three-story La Promesse (The Promise) school in Petion-ville, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, caved in in a heap of cement slabs and twisted steel rods at about 10:00 a.m. (1500 GMT) Friday, trapping scores inside.

A new story had been under construction atop the school when it fell in, also destroying or damaging five homes next to it.

Colonel Raymundo Elefante, commander of the 8th Philippine Peacekeeping Contingent serving with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, led two platoons of Filipino peacekeepers to help in the search and rescue efforts, Davide said.

The team so far was able to four survivors and four fatalities, he said.

By late in the day around 50 bodies, most of them children, had been found, officials said.

Davide said authorities were expecting the casualty toll to climb as there were around 700 students with ages ranging from three to 20-years old attending classes in the church-run school when tragedy struck.

The Filipino peacekeepers were even forced to run the remaining two kilometers to the accident site after the narrow roadway was made impassable to vehicles by hundreds of distraught relatives and kibitzers who were also trying to make their way to the school, Davide said.

Davide said the Filipino peacekeepers turned over the search and rescue functions to the military engineering and medical units from Brazil, Chile and Ecuador that arrived later and focused instead on restoring order by performing crowd control duty around the accident site.

"Our peacekeepers went beyond the call of duty and put their own lives at risk," Davide said as he paid tribute to the members of the Philippine contingent who took part in the rescue operations.

The Philippines has maintained a steady presence in Haiti since 2004 when the United Nations sent peace monitors to restore order in the impoverished Caribbean nation following massive protests that led to the overthrow of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide. The Philippines lost one peacekeeper in 2005 after gunmen loyal to Aristide ambushed UN peacekeepers, killing Army Technical Sergeant Antonio Batomalaque.

At present, the Philippines has 157 officers and enlisted personnel from the Army, Navy and Air Force and 13 officers from the Philippine National Police serving with the United Nations Stabilization Mission

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