By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The death toll rose to at least 75 on Saturday in the collapse of a ramshackle church school in Haiti when rescue workers uncovered a room with 17 dead, many of them children, officials said.

Rescuers worked through the night under giant generator- powered lights in a shanty town on the outskirts of the Haitian capital to search for survivors in the rubble of the three-story La Promesse school, which caved in on Friday while class was in session.

Debris crushed neighboring residences in the Nerettes community near Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital.

President Rene Preval, who was at the scene early on Saturday, said searchers dropped water and biscuits through holes in the rubble to a group of children and focused their efforts on reaching them.

"Last night we were sure there were still seven children alive. We got one of them but we have lost all signs of the other six being alive," Preval said. "Some say they might be sleeping. Others believe they have died."

As Preval was speaking, rescue worker Yves Torchon broke more bad news.

"Mr. President, they just discovered a room where there are at least 17 people dead," Torchon said. He warned that the toll was likely to go higher.

At least 124 people were injured. Officials said there were 700 children enrolled at the school but it was unknown how many were in the building when it collapsed.

"It's like an earthquake," said Brazilian Maj. Gen. Carlos dos Santos Cruz, the commander for U.N. troops in Haiti.

CROWDS OF PARENTS

Crowds of screaming and crying parents swarmed the ruins in the aftermath searching for their children. Bodies of students lay crushed under blocks of concrete.

"It really breaks your heart to see those children under the debris without being able to help them," Preval said. "As a father it is devastating to see such a disaster."

One boy was trapped by debris that pinned his legs. He begged the rescuers to "please cut my feet off," a firefighter told Reuters.

A rescue worker said the dead included an entire philosophy class with the exception of one girl who was alive because she had asked for permission to leave to use the toilet just before the collapse.

Rescue workers from the French Caribbean island of Martinique arrived at the scene to help cut through the rubble. A U.S. rescue team was expected shortly.

The roads around the school were so jammed with people looking for loved ones that some of the rescuers had to be brought in by helicopter.

"My son who is 15 years old, he's dead. He's my only son," sobbed 40-year-old Josiane Dandin. "I don't know what I'm going to do."

Another woman screamed for her missing 12-year-old daughter. "I don't know if she is dead or alive," she said.

More than 9,000 multinational troops and police make up a U.N. peacekeeping force sent to stabilize Haiti after its former president was driven out in a bloody rebellion in 2004.

The impoverished Caribbean nation lacks sophisticated rescue equipment. Haiti is also still struggling with the destruction wrought by four tropical storms and hurricanes that hit in quick succession this year, killing more than 800 people and destroying 60 percent of the crop harvest. (Writing by Jim Loney, editing by Vicki Allen)

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