According to a UN-backed report, 60% of natural disaster fatalities were caused by earthquakes.

According to a recent UN-supported report, earthquakes are the deadliest natural disaster of the past ten years.

The report by the Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) states that nearly 60% of people killed by disasters globally died due to earthquakes.

The news comes in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti with a magnitude of 7.0 which is feared to have killed 200,000, with hundreds of thousands more affected.

According to the figures released by CRED last week (28 January), 3,852 disasters killed more than 780,000 people in the last decade. More than two billion people were in some way affected and the cost of the disasters totalled a minimum of $960 billion (£605bn).

After earthquakes, storms and extreme temperatures were the next deadliest disasters, causing 22% and 11% of natural disaster deaths respectively.

Margareta Wahlström, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, said: “Earthquakes are the deadliest natural hazard of the past ten years and remain a serious threat for millions of people worldwide as eight out of the ten most populous cities in the world are on earthquake fault-lines.”

These eight cities are Tokyo, Mexico City, New York, Mumbai, Delhi, Shanghai, Kolkata and Jakarta.

Asia is the continent that has suffered the most disasters during the last decade in terms of human losses.

The report states that the deadliest disasters of the last decade were the Indian Ocean Tsunami with 226,408 fatalities in 2004 and Cyclone Nargis with 138,366 deaths in Myanmar in 2008.

Professor Guha-Sapir, Director of CRED, stated: “The number of catastrophic events has more than doubled since the 1980-1989 decade. In contrast, the numbers of affected people have increased at a slower rate. This may be due to better community preparedness and prevention.”