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Rubble on the streets of Haiti following a serious earthquake - Source: Reuters -
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Peacekeepers and United States troops are joining forces as food and medical slowly starts to get through to desperate earthquake survivors in Haiti.
Five days on from the devastating magnitude 7.0 quake, the streets of Port-au-Prince are becoming increasingly lawless streets and hundreds of thousands of people are still hungry and homeless.
The United States was to send more troops to aid in Haiti's
rescue as tens of thousands of hungry, thirsty and injured Haitian
earthquake survivors waited desperately for promised food and
medical care.
The US Southern Command said some 2,200 Marines with heavy
equipment to clear debris, medical aid and helicopters, would join
some 5,000 US troops already in the region. The aim is to have
approximately 10,000 US troops in the area to participate in the
rescue operation, spokesman Jose Ruiz of the US Southern Command
said.
World leaders have promised massive amounts of assistance to
rebuild Haiti since Wednesday's quake killed as many as 200,000
people and left its capital, Port-au-Prince, in ruins. Aid workers
struggled to get food and medical assistance to the survivors, many
of them injured and living in makeshift camps on streets strewn
with debris and decomposing bodies.
But nearly a week into the crisis the aid was only just starting to
get to those in need.
The country's president said on Monday US troops will help UN
peacekeepers keep order on Haiti's increasingly lawless streets,
where overstretched police and UN peacekeepers have been unable to
provide full security.
Speaking on ABC's This Week, the commander of the US military
operation in Haiti, Lieutenant General Ken Keen said: "We are here
principally for a humanitarian assistance operation, but security
is a critical component. ... We are going to have to address the
situation, the security.
Former US President Bill Clinton, the UN Special Envoy to Haiti,
was to meet on Tuesday with Haitian President Rene Preval, whose
cabinet met outside police headquarters on Monday in a circle of
white plastic chairs.
Clinton was to bring aid supplies and determine more about what
Haiti needs.
Logistical logjams and streets piled with debris have slowed the
delivery of medical and food supplies, but there were signs of
progress on Monday as international medical teams took over damaged
hospitals and clinics where seriously injured and sick people had
lain untreated for days.
Rescue teams also raced against time to free survivors from the
rubble of collapsed buildings, with more successful rescues
reported on Monday.
UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said the United Nations Security
Council would be asked on Tuesday to approve an increase in the
number of UN troops and police in Haiti.
Another UN official said an additional 1,250 blue helmets would be
sought to help the Haiti contingent, which suffered dozens of dead
and missing in the 7.0 magnitude earthquake.
In an indication of the sensitivity of US soldiers operating in a
Caribbean state where they have intervened in the past, Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez accused Washington of "occupying Haiti
undercover."
Police force suffered too
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was in the Haitian capital on
Monday, called it "one of the worst humanitarian crises in decades"
and urged Haitians to be patient.
Ban visited a makeshift settlement for survivors opposite the
collapsed presidential palace, and people in the crowd shouted to
him. "Where is the food? Where is the help?"
With people turning more desperate by the day, hundreds of looters
swarmed smashed shops in downtown Port-au-Prince in a second day of
violence.
Looters fought each other with knives, hammers and rocks and police
tried to disperse them with gunfire. At least two suspected looters
were shot dead, witnesses said.
Heavily armed gang members have returned to the Cite Soleil
shantytown since breaking out from prison after the quake.
Local mayors, businessmen and bankers told Preval that restoring
law and order was essential for reviving at least some commercial
activity.
"Whether things explode is all down to whether help gets through
from the international community," said police commander Ralph
Jean-Brice, in charge of Haiti's West Department, whose force is
down by half due to effects of the disaster on their own families
and homes.
Food from the air
The US military said on Monday it was doing its best to get as many
planes as possible into Port-au-Prince, after aid agencies
complained shipments of aid had not been allowed to land at the
US-controlled airport.
The airport's control tower was knocked out by the quake and US
military air controllers were operating from a radio post on the
airfield grass, said Colonel Buck Elton, commander of the US
military directing flights at Haiti's airport.
More than 30 countries have rushed rescue teams, doctors, field
hospitals, food, medicine and other supplies to Haiti since
Wednesday's quake, choking the airspace and the ramp at the small
airfield.
Although a few street markets had begun selling vegetables and
charcoal, tens of thousands of earthquake survivors across the city
were still clamoring for help.
There were jostling scrums for food and water as UN trucks
distributed food packets and US military helicopters swooped down
to throw out boxes of water bottles and rations.
"We haven't moved for four days, only God knows how long we can
survive like this, but there are no jobs and no houses," said Marie
Gracieuse Baptiste, a single mother with four children, sheltering
at one improvised survivors' camps.
A crude sign at the camp's entrance read: "People needs (sic)
water, food."
Haiti is the Western Hemisphere's poorest country and has for
decades struggled with devastating storms, floods and political
unrest. About 9,000 UN peacekeepers have provided security since a
2004 uprising ousted one president but the mission lost at least 40
members when its headquarters collapsed, including its top
leaders.
Haitian government officials said the total death toll was likely
to be between 100,000 and 200,000.
Trucks piled with corpses were ferrying bodies to hurriedly
excavated mass graves outside the city, but tens of thousands of
victims are still believed buried under the rubble.
The president of the Inter-American Development Bank, Luis Alberto
Moreno, will visit Haiti on Tuesday and attend a donors meeting in
the Dominican Republic to start analyzing Haiti's reconstruction
needs, a bank spokesman said.
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