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Reuters) - Haiti mourned more than 300,000 victims of its devastating 2010 earthquake on Wednesday in a somber, poignant one-year anniversary clouded by pessimism over slow reconstruction and political uncertainty.
When the precise 4:53 p.m. one year anniversary of the moment the January 12 catastrophe struck, many in the poor Caribbean country's rubble-clogged capital recalled with quiet emotion where they had been and how lucky they were to have survived.
"A year ago I was under the rubble. Seven people saved me and I thank God for that," said Stefanor Mercure Alexandre, a 23-year-old unemployed man, sitting outside the quake-scarred white-painted presidential palace in Port-au-Prince.
Haiti's government had called for a minute of silence to remember the victims of what some experts have called the worst urban disaster of modern times. The normal hubbub of the crowded, sprawling coastal city quieted briefly and a clump of white balloons floated into the sky.
Earlier, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive announced more than 316,000 people had been killed in the 2010 earthquake, revising upward previous estimates of around 250,000. He said additional bodies had been recovered over the year from the rubble and some were still entombed in collapsed buildings.
Despite an outpouring of solidarity for Haiti from around the world, billions of dollars of aid pledges and a huge ongoing humanitarian operation, ordinary Haitians say they are still waiting to see a positive impact from the recovery effort in the Western Hemisphere's poorest state.
During the day, thousands of Haitians, many wearing white in mourning, attended poignant memorial services around the battered impoverished Caribbean nation.
At the main memorial ceremony at the ruins of the capital's National Cathedral conducted by the Papal envoy to Haiti, many local mourners stretched out their arms, calling aloud the names of dead loved ones and imploring God's help.
Other religious leaders, officials and foreign dignitaries, including former U.S. President and U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton, were present. Without explanation, Haiti's outgoing President Rene Preval did not attend this event.
But he did later lay the first stone of what will be a memorial to the quake victims at the site of the country's main tax office which was leveled in the disaster.
PROTESTS AGAINST "OCCUPATION"
In signs of popular frustration over the sluggish pace of internationally backed recovery efforts, there were small scattered protests in the capital by Haitians who condemned the "occupation" of Haiti by U.N. peacekeepers and aid NGOs.
"NGOs are wasting money" read a banner at one of the protests in the city center.
One of the world's poorest countries, Haiti was already in bad shape before the quake. But promises from the international community to "build Haiti back better" now ring hollow to many of Haiti's most vulnerable.
"We wake up every morning in the dust ... We need people who can understand the country, who can change the country," Carla Fleuriven, a 19-year-old mother of three dressed in a white skirt and blouse, told Reuters outside the Cathedral.

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