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Haiti's government has ended the search and rescue phase of the quake relief effort after at least 132 people were pulled out alive from under the rubble, the United Nations said Saturday.
"The government has declared the search and rescue phase over," the UN's Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest situation report on the relief effort.
"There were 132 live rescues by international search and rescue teams," it added.
An 84-year-old woman and 22-year-old man were extracted from under the debris in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, on Friday -- 10 days after the magnitude 7.0 quake.
But UN figures suggested that the number of those located alive had diminished significantly in recent days.
The Haitian government declared the rescue effort over at 4:00 pm (2100 GMT) on Friday, the United Nations said.
"The government made its decision after consulting international experts; it's a sovereign decision," OCHA spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told AFP.
"Some of the search effort is continuing, to look for bodies," she said.
Up to 67 search and rescue teams with 1,918 staff and 160 dogs had combed the ruins of Port-au-Prince and towns and villages in south Haiti for signs of life under collapsed homes and buildings.
Aid workers have already said that a record number of people for such a disaster were pulled out alive, while thousands more are thought to have been saved by residents.
Light urban search and rescue teams sent by several nations were heading home, while those with heavy lifting or drilling equipment shifted to the rest of the huge relief effort, helping to clear rubble and providing medical care, Byrs said.
On top of Port-au-Prince and three other airports in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, the United Nations was also directing aid through eastern Dominican tourist resorts at Puerto Plata and Samana.
"Las Americas airport (in the Dominican capital Santo Domingo) is starting to experience slight congestion," Byrs explained.
As deliveries of food, water, shelter and medical care to hundreds of thousands of people were scaled up in Port-au-Prince and the worst affected towns of Jacmel and Leogane, attention was shifting to the homeless.
A huge wave of displacement was under way, partly with official blessing, as tens of thousands moved out to parts of the country that were not affected by the earthquake, the worst to hit the Americas in recent history.
"The number of people leaving Port-au-Prince is increasing daily," the United Nations said, as more than 130,000 people took advantage of the government’s offer of free transport to other cities.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated that as many as one million people could head for impoverished rural areas, adding to the strain on local resources, OCHA said.
The government was planning to house the displaced in settlements for tens of thousands of people each, while others were being encouraged to stay with relatives.
Rural communities hosting displaced people would also need help because of the high degree of poverty.
"They already have trouble eking out a living, these communities will need support," Byrs said.
She underlined that Haiti's rainy season -- one of the sources of disasters that have battered the country in recent years -- was about to begin.
Ministers from Brazil, France, the United States and other nations are due to hold talks in Montreal on Monday to coordinate aid for the quake-hit Caribbean nation and prepare a later summit on reconstruction.
Donor nations and international lending institutions pledged a fresh two-year, 324-million-dollar, aid package to help Haiti pull out of poverty and cyclone destruction at a conference in April 2009.
