Fight for life as Haiti survivors beg for aid

PORT-AU-PRINCE

Rescuers pulled traumatised survivors out of the ruins of their shattered homes as Haitians begged Monday for food, water and medicine six days after a quake flattened much of their nation.

Thousands more US troops were poised to join the beleaguered relief effort which has struggled to get to hundreds of thousands of the homeless, injured and despairing.

Scuffles and looting have broken out as survivors fight for whatever they can find, while all around the stench of burning bodies clings to the air as tens of thousands of rotting corpses are hurriedly disposed of.

Officials fear the eventual death toll from Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude quake could reach 200,000, and by Sunday 70,000 had already been buried in mass graves.

International aid is beginning to trickle in but life-saving supplies are desperately thin on the ground as relief workers grasp the sheer scale of the crisis, which has made several hundred thousand people homeless.

US President Barack Obama has mobilised military reserves and UN chief Ban Ki-moon promised after visiting the disaster zone Sunday to speed up the aid effort.

"I am here to say we are with you. You are not alone," Ban said after flying over the ruined capital Port-au-Prince in a helicopter.

"Time is still of the essence. We're getting better, but there is still a lot of misery in Haiti," said US Rear Admiral Ted Branch, who commands the US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson strike group.

But amidst the death and desperation were life-affirming tales of survival against all the odds.

A text message to the United Nations set in motion a relief operation that led to the rescue two days later of Maria, Ariel and Lamy after being buried for more than 100 hours under a collapsed supermarket.

"I'm seven," Ariel shouted to rescuers seeking signs of life, adding that she was stuck next to a dead man but covered with supermarket food.

"It was electric when we saw the fruit of our labor, when that little girl came out," said Joseph Fernandez, of a Florida search and rescue team.

Another text message led to the ruins of the upmarket Montana hotel whose German co-owner was pulled out four days after the quake.

Two Australian news crews dug by hand to rescue an 18-month-old baby lying alongside her dead parents.

"She did not cry," reporter Robert Penfold told The Australian newspaper. "She looked astonished, almost as if she was seeing the world for the first time."

At the UN's six-story headquarters, which become a tomb for so many, Dane Jen Kristensen also emerged from the debris. "It is simply a miracle," one of his rescuers said.

Some 330 UN staffers are still missing in the rubble of four UN facilities around Port-au-Prince in what has become the global body's biggest disaster in its history.

Elsewhere, however, residents abandoned the search for survivors and began torching the squalid ruins to stop the spread of disease.

Survivors were besieging hospitals and makeshift clinics, some carrying the injured on their backs or on carts.

Staff and medicines were in critically short supply. "They are overwhelmed and bursting at the seams," the Red Cross said.

Hundreds of rioters ransacked Hyppolite market in the heart of the capital. Police reinforcements arrived armed with shotguns and assault rifles, and one rioter was fatally shot in the head, an AFP photographer said.

The United Nations has estimated that the quake affected three million people -- one third of Haiti's population -- and left 300,000 homeless. Some 40 tent cities have sprung up in Port-au-Prince, according to the Red Cross.

Ban, who met with Haitian President Rene Preval, also toured a makeshift tent city of 50,000 people next to the collapsed presidential palace.

"We need food, we need shelter, we need work," angry Haitians shouted. Ban urged them to be patient, saying help was coming.

Even where aid is getting through, it is still not enough.

Emergency food rations reached Challe, a camp for 10,000 displaced people, for the first time, but quake survivors were angry that only small packets of dry biscuits were handed out.

A UN soldier providing security at the camp said the World Food Programme had "a lot of food and water in a warehouse close to the airport," but there were not enough trucks to distribute it.

Some 280 emergency centers coordinated by the WFP were to be set up Monday to distribute aid and provide shelter, a Haitian government source said.

Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, running the vast US military relief operation, said 200,000 might be a possible "start point" for the final death toll, but that it was too early to know.

"Clearly, this is a disaster of epic proportions, and we've got a lot of work ahead of us," he said.

Another 7,500 US military were expected by Monday to join 5,800 US forces already on the ground or in ships off Haiti.

Canada said donor nations would meet on January 25 in Montreal to discuss Haiti's reconstruction needs.