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33 Haitian children arrive in France

Saturday, January 23, 2010
PARIS: Thirty-three Haitian children adopted by French families flew into Paris Friday, airport officials told media, leaving behind a country shattered by the January 12 earthquake that killed thousands.

The children, aged between one and six years, were met at the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as their new families and medical teams, they said.

They would join their adoptive families once their papers had been verified, an official said.

They were also due to meet Red Cross and Emergency Medical Assistance Service personnel to treat "the emotional and psychological shock they have been through," he said.

Several of the children had lived in a nursery that was severely damaged in last week's earthquake but "not a single child was injured and not a single adoption file was lost," French consul in Haiti, Jean-Pierre Gueguan, told media.

The children -- some orphans and others abandoned -- had on Thursday left the school where they had taken shelter after the destruction and headed to the Port-au-Prince airport singing "the little train".

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