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A boy lies injured in a makeshift hospital after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince - Source: Reuters -
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World leaders pledged massive aid programs to rebuild Haiti but
desperate earthquake survivors were still waiting for food, water
and medicine.
Five days after a 7.0 magnitude quake killed up to 200,000 people,
international rescue teams clawed away at the rubble of collapsed
buildings in the wrecked capital, Port-au-Prince, in a race against
time to find more survivors.
But logistical logjams kept major relief from reaching the hundreds
of thousands of hungry Haitians waiting for help, many of them
sheltering in makeshift camps on streets strewn with debris and
decomposing bodies.
"I'm going there with a very heavy heart. This is one of the worst
humanitarian crises in decades. The damage, destruction, loss of
life is just overwhelming," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said
as he boarded a flight for Haiti on Sunday.
The United Nations was feeding 40,000 people a day and hoped to
increase that to one million within two weeks, he said.
"The challenge at this time is how to coordinate all of this
outpouring of assistance."
As people turned more desperate and in the widespread absence of
authority, looters swarmed over collapsed stores carrying out food
and anything else they could find.
Fighting broke out between groups carrying knives, ice-picks,
hammers and rocks.
President Rene Preval said 3,500 US troops will help overstretched
UN peacekeepers and Haitian police guarantee security in the
capital.
"We have 2,000 police in Port-au-Prince who are severely affected.
And 3,000 bandits escaped from prison (during the quake). This
gives you an idea of how bad the situation is," Preval told
reporters.
Thieves lynched
Residents awoke to find the bodies of thieves lynched by mobs or
shot by men claiming to be plainclothes police.
A Reuters journalist said he saw the burned body of a man locals
said was set ablaze by angry residents who caught him stealing, and
two young men lying on the ground with bullet wounds to the head
and arms tied behind their backs.
"Haitians are partly taking things into their own hands. There are
no jails, the criminals are running free, there are no authorities
controlling this," said teacher Eddy Toussaint, part of a crowd
staring at the bodies.
Many Haitians streamed out of the city on foot with suitcases on
their heads or jammed in cars to find food and shelter in the
countryside.
Others crowded the airport hoping to get on planes that arrived
laden with emergency supplies and left packed with Haitians.
The shell-shocked government has given the US military control
over the tiny airport to guide aid flights from around the
world.
Dozens of nations have sent planes with rescue teams, doctors,
field hospitals, food, medicine and other supplies, but faced a
bottleneck at the airport, where fuel was in short supply.
Some groups complained that their flights had been diverted to
the neighbouring Dominican Republic, forcing them to carry
emergency supplies into Haiti overland.
The US military said it had set up a joint task force to coordinate
the flow of aid into Haiti under the codename Operation Unified
Response.
Around 5,000 US military personnel were already involved and an
additional 7,500 were scheduled to arrive by Monday.
A fleet of 30 helicopters was flying relief directly to Haitians,
while US planes were bringing in supplies and several ships were
either off Haiti or on their way.
Scrums for food
On the streets of Port-au-Prince, scarce police patrols fired
occasional shots and tear gas to disperse looters and the
distribution of aid appeared random, chaotic and minimal.
Hundreds of trucks carrying aid and guarded by armed UN patrols
streamed away from the airport and UN headquarters to different
parts of the city.
But they were soon obstructed on streets clogged with people,
vans carrying coffins and bodies and even makeshift roadblocks put
up by homeless survivors forced to live and sleep out in the
open.
There were jostling scrums for food and water as US military
helicopters swooped down to throw out boxes of water bottles and
rations.
A reporter also saw foreign aid workers tossing packets of food
to desperate Haitians.
"The distribution is totally disorganized. They are not identifying
the people who need the water. The sick and the old have no
chance," said Estime Pierre Deny, standing at the back of a crowd
looking for water with his empty plastic container.
Haiti is the Western Hemisphere's poorest country and has for
decades struggled with devastating storms, floods and political
unrest.
Around 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.
More rescued alive
Aftershocks still shook the capital, terrifying survivors and
sending rubble and dust tumbling from buildings.
Three people were pulled out alive from a supermarket early on
Sunday.
US and Turkish teams freed a seven-year-old Haitian girl, a Haitian man and an American woman from the rubble of the five-story building.
They were dazed but did not appear to be seriously
injured.
Trucks piled with corpses have been ferrying bodies to hurriedly
excavated mass graves outside the city, but tens of thousands of
bodies are still believed buried under the rubble.
Haitian government officials said the death toll was likely to be
between 100,000 and 200,000.
Dozens of bloated bodies have been dumped in the yard outside the
main hospital, decomposing in the sun.
The hospital gardens were a mass of beds with injured people,
with makeshift drips hanging from trees.
Haiti's government is struggling to operate as the quake destroyed
the presidential palace and knocked out communications and
power.
Preval is living at the judicial police headquarters and holding
cabinet meetings with foreign ambassadors outside, seated on
plastic chairs.
"Everything in Haiti is broken. All the ministries are fallen.
There is not one person in the country without a friend or family
member dead," said Information Minister Marie Laurence Jocelyn
Lassegue.
"When they say the government is not fast, we are truly doing
our best."
Worshipers gathered on Sunday at churches across the city.
Though many are living on the street, the men somehow turned up in
pressed white shirts and ties with dark jackets, and the women in
smart linen dresses and head scarfs at the Assembly of God church
in the Petionville suburb.
"It has been a week for thanking God for protecting us. We are
suffering a lot but praying helps us. We lost our home but our
family is safe thanks to God, said Anne Pierre, a 64-year-old whose
seven children and 12 grandchildren all survived.
