US troops boost Haiti aid security as looters swarm

PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – The United States was  sending more troops today to help protect a huge relief  operation in Haiti from marauding looters as tens of thousands  of earthquake survivors waited desperately for promised food  and medical care.
Gangs of looters still prowled demolished streets of  downtown Port-au-Prince filching goods from destroyed shops  with little police presence, but some signs of normality  returned as street sellers emerged with fruit and vegetables.
“We do not have the capacity to fix this situation. Haiti  needs help … the Americans are welcome here. But where are  they? We need them here on the street with us,” said policeman  Dorsainvil Robenson, as he chased looters.
Some 2,200 Marines with heavy earth-moving equipment,  medical aid and helicopters were arriving today, said the  U.S. Southern Command, which aims to have 10,000 U.S. troops in  the area for the rescue operation.
World leaders have promised massive amounts of assistance  to rebuild Haiti since Tuesday’s quake killed as many as  200,000 people and left its capital, Port-au-Prince, in ruins.
European Union institutions and member states have offered  more than 400 million euros ($575.6 million) in emergency and  longer-term assistance to Haiti, which even before the disaster  was already the poorest state in the Western Hemisphere.
Aid workers struggled to get food and medical assistance to  the survivors, many of them injured, hungry and thirsty and  living  in makeshift camps on streets strewn with debris and  decomposing  bodies.
“The situation is very tough on the ground, including for  agencies and countries rushing to help. Minimal survival even  for staff there is an issue,” the head of the World Health  Organization, Margaret Chan, said in Geneva.
Nearly a week into the crisis, international aid was only  just starting to get through to those in need, delayed by  logistical logjams and security concerns.
Haitian President Rene Preval said yesterday U.S. troops  will help U.N. peacekeepers keep order on Haiti’s increasingly  lawless streets, where overstretched police and U.N.  peacekeepers have been unable to provide full security.
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” the commander of the U.S.  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.”
In an indication of the sensitivity of U.S. soldiers  operating in a Caribbean state where they have intervened in  the past, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accused Washington  of “occupying Haiti undercover.”
Canada will host a meeting of foreign ministers in Montreal  on  Jan. 25 to look at Haiti’s needs, the Canadian government said.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, meanwhile, proposed  that  African nations offer Haitian survivors the chance to resettle  in  Africa “the land of their ancestors”.
“Africa should offer Haitians the chance to return home. It  is their right,” Wade said on his website. Local media quoted  Senegalese officials as saying the West African country was  ready  to offer parcels of fertile land to Haitians.
The president of the Inter-American Development Bank, Luis  Alberto Moreno, will visit Haiti today and attend a donors  meeting in the Dominican Republic to start discussing Haiti’s  reconstruction needs, a bank spokesman said.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the U.N. Special Envoy  to  Haiti, was due to meet on Monday with Preval, whose cabinet met  outside police headquarters on Sunday in a circle of white  plastic  chairs due to the collapse of the presidential palace.
Clinton was to bring aid supplies and determine more about  what Haiti needs.
POLICE PURSUE LOOTERS
Streets piled with debris slowed the delivery of medical  and food supplies, but there were signs of progress as  international medical teams took over damaged hospitals where  seriously injured people had lain untreated for days.
Rescue teams also raced against time to find people alive  under the rubble of collapsed buildings, with more successful  rescues of survivors reported on Sunday.
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.
With people turning more desperate by the day, looters have  swarmed smashed shops in downtown Port-au-Prince, fighting each  other with knives, hammers, ice-picks and rocks while police  tried  to disperse them with gunfire. At least two suspected looters  were  shot dead on Sunday, witnesses said.
Heavily armed gang members have returned to the Cite Soleil  shantytown since breaking out from prison after the quake.
“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 the quake.
Local mayors, businessmen and bankers told Preval that  restoring law and order was essential for reviving at least  some  commercial activity.
FOOD FROM THE AIR
The U.S. military said 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  U.S.-controlled airport.
The airport’s control tower was knocked out by the quake  and U.S. military air controllers were operating from a radio  post on the airfield grass, said Colonel Buck Elton, commander  of the U.S. 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 Tuesday’s quake, choking the airspace and the ramp at the  small airfield.
Although a few street markets had begun selling vegetables,  charcoal, chicken and pork, tens of thousands of earthquake  survivors across the city were still clamoring for help.
There were jostling scrums for food and water as U.N.  trucks distributed food packets and U.S. 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  water, food.”