S. Korean parliament approves peacekeeping dispatch to Haiti

South Korea's National Assembly on Tuesday approved in a plenary meeting a government bill on sending a unit of peacekeepers to earthquake-hit Haiti, the foreign ministry said in a press release.

All 173 lawmakers who were present at the meeting voted in favor of the bill.

The bill will allow the government to dispatch a unit of some 240 troops to Haiti as part of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), the ministry said.

The unit, mainly comprised of engineers, medical personnel and servicemembers, will be stationed in Leogane, about 40 kilometers west of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, to help rehabilitate and reconstruct the city, as well as to provide humanitarian assistance for people there, it added.

The small Caribbean nation was hit by an earthquake of 7.3- magnitude on Jan. 12, which killed more than 200,000 people, injured many others and left 2 million in need of aid.

Source:Xinhua