HAITI: UN peacekeepers increased security yesterday in a Haitian city where more than 1,000 people died in floods, after desperate survivors fought each other to get at emergency food supplies.
Mr Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, spokesman for a Brazilian-led UN force patrolling the poor Caribbean country after the removal from power earlier this year of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, said additional UN troops would also guard food convoys heading to Gonaives.
The decision to boost security around relief operations was made after UN troops had to fire into the air on Wednesday to prevent looting when the first beans, rice and other supplies were handed out to an estimated 20,000 flood victims.
"I think it's fair to say that the situation is tense because people are desperate. Many have not eaten since Saturday night or Sunday morning," said Ms Anne Poulsen, spokeswoman for the UN World Food Programme.
"It's a concern but it's not a problem," Ms Poulsen added.
The national civil defence agency said 1,150 bodies had been recovered by yesterday morning, mainly from Gonaives, a city of 200,000 that was buried under a wall of water and a thick coat of mud after tropical storm Jeanne triggered torrential rainfall over the weekend.
Another 1,200 people were still missing and the United Nations warned the body count could rise dramatically in the coming days because two areas of Gonaives remained under water and inaccessible.
A number of children, abandoned or orphaned, were seen roaming around Gonaives, the Red Cross reported.
The poorest country in the Americas, Haiti frequently suffers devastating floods because most of its trees have been chopped down to make charcoal for cooking. Floods on the Dominican-Haitian border killed about 2,000 people in May.
Mr Aristide, the deposed president, mourned the latest victims in a statement issued from his exile in Pretoria, South Africa.
"It is with great sadness that I watch reports of the devastation wrought upon Haiti ... Gonaives, the cradle of our independence, has suffered enormously," he said. "Condolences and courage to an entire nation that has seen much pain and suffering in this tumultuous bicentennial year," he added.
Gonaives was the city where Haiti declared independence from France 200 years ago after a slave revolt, and it was also where auprising began against Mr Aristide this year, forcing him to flee on February 29th.
Donor countries, which in July pledged $1.3 billion to help Haiti bring an end to chronic political instability and poverty, met in the capital, Port-au-Prince, yesterday and were expected to discuss how they could help the country of eight million cope with another humanitarian catastrophe.
Officials said the meeting had been scheduled before the floods and was originally aimed at finding ways to speed up the arrival of the pledged development funds.
Jeanne, now a hurricane, also killed 11 people in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and two in the US Caribbean territory of Puerto Rico.
The hurricane, with winds of 160 kph was 744 kms east of Great Abaco island in the Bahamas by 11 a.m. local time and moving on a westerly track that could have it threatening Florida by the weekend. - (Reuters)