Rescue and Aid
More UN peacekeepers expected for troubled Haiti
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-01-18 20:03
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Looters fight for products at a business area in Port-au-Prince January 16, 2010. [Agencies] |
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: Thousands of US Marines were expected off the shore of this crumbled capital city Monday to help relief organizations get supplies to Haitian earthquake survivors who questioned foreigners, soldiers and God about aid yet to arrive.
"We don't need military aid. What we need is food and shelter," one young man yelled at UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during his visit to the city Sunday. "We are dying," a woman told him, explaining she and her five children didn't have any food.
Haitian riot police meanwhile fired tear gas to disperse crowds of looters in the city's downtown as several nearby shops burned.
"We've been ordered not to shoot at people unless completely necessary," said Pierre Roger, a Haitian police officer who spoke as yet another crowd of looters ran by. "We're too little, and these people are too desperate."
A reliable death toll may be weeks away, but the Pan American Health Organization estimates 50,000 to 100,000 died in Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude quake. Haitian officials believe the number is higher. Survivors live outside for fear of unstable buildings and aftershocks.
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On the streets, people were still dying, pregnant women were giving birth and the injured were showing up in wheelbarrows and on people's backs at hurriedly erected field hospitals.
On Sunday, supplies of water made it to more people around the capital and while fights broke out elsewhere, others formed lines to get supplies handed out by soldiers at a golf course. Still, with a blocked city port and relief groups claiming the US-run airport is being poorly managed, food and medicine are scarce. Anger mounted hourly over the slow pace of the assistance.
