President Obama pledged Wednesday that the U.S. government would lead “a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives” in Haiti after that country’s powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake. Obama said U.S. relief efforts would be coordinated by the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Dr. Raj Shah. He urged Americans trying to locate family members in Haiti to contact the State Department at phone number 888-407-4747. “The reports and images that we’ve seen of collapsed hospitals, crumbled homes and men and women carrying their injured neighbors through the streets are truly heart-wrenching,” the president said at the White House. “For a country and a people who are no strangers to hardship and suffering, this tragedy seems especially cruel and incomprehensible.”
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