PORT-AU-PRINCE: An international rescue team on Saturday dug a man out of the rubble of the Haitian capital 11 days after a devastating quake and took him away on a stretcher.
Wismond Exantus, 25, said he survived his ordeal in the ruins of the grocer's shop where he worked by drinking Coca-Cola and eating snacks, a rare tale of hope from a disaster that has claimed more than 112,000 lives.
His rescue came as thousands of survivors wept outside the capital's shattered cathedral for the funeral of the archbishop of Port-au-Prince in a moving ceremony that symbolized the deep mourning of the Caribbean nation.
"I feel good," Exantus told media in Creole from his hospital bed after French, American and Greek search and rescue teams removed him from the debris on a stretcher.
"I survived by drinking Coca-Cola. I drank Coca-Cola every day, and I ate some little tiny things," he said.
Exantus' brother said he had been unable to approach the shop, in a dangerous area plagued by looters, because of the police. His family eventually alerted a Greek rescue team to his cries deep under the remains of the shop.
"We can say it's really a miracle and we can hope that it's not the last," said French rescue team commander Lieutenant Colonel Christophe Renou.
The United Nations announced just hours earlier that Haiti's government had on Friday declared an end to search-and-rescue efforts so aid workers could focus on getting supplies to the estimated 600,000 people left homeless by the quake.
But more than 60 international rescue teams ignored the declaration and continued to search for signs of life, having already saved 132 people across the razed city since the January 12 disaster.
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