The German government has earmarked 1,5 million euros ($2,17 million) in relief aid.

"We join the people of Haiti in mourning the victims. The German government will do everything in its power to support and help Haiti," Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Wednesday, just hours after the quake turned large parts of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince to rubble.

The government's THW emergency assistance organization has already sent four people out to Port-au-Prince to see what is needed, and two special teams - one to rescue people from the rubble and the other to provide safe water supplies to survivors - are getting ready to leave.

The German Development Ministry has put together emergency food supplies worth 500,000 euros.

Europeans take action

Elsewhere, the EU has pledged three million euros.

Countries including Belgium, Sweden and Luxembourg have offered help via an EU emergency assistance coordination mechanism, with offers ranging from a water purification unit to tents.

France is sending two airplanes, a field hospital and rescue services. Britain is also sending a search and rescue team and heavy rescue equipment.

One of the organisations that is already on the ground in Haiti is the UN World Food Program (WFP), the world's largest humanitarian organisation.

Relief Biscuits

Ralf Suedhoff, head of the WFP Berlin bureau, says about 200 staff are currently in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world where about two million people suffer from hunger. The WPF has food stocks to supply about 30,000 people with first hand aid, which in this case, are high energy biscuits.

"They have no opportunity to cook, they usually have no safe water, so that's what they can use best in these days and we hope to supply them with these biscuits for the first week."

They are a key tool in an emergency, Suedhoff told Deutsche Welle.

The WFP also has a hub for emergencies in El Salvador, so more high energy biscuits will be arriving shortly, Südhoff said.

Now it is a question of getting things done as quickly as possible, Suedhoff said, as search and rescue teams from a global network were being mobilised by the United Nations to find survivors in the rubble.

"It's a race against time."

db/dpa/ Reuters/AFP
Editor: Michael Lawton