In a cathedral ankle-deep in mud and overturned pews, Haitians prayed for 1,500 killed by Tropical Storm Jeanne and gave thanks for their lives -- though most lost homes and belongings -- while the UN rushed in hundreds more peacekeepers to stem looting by gangsters and ordinary citizens of the ravaged city of Gonaives.
The Brazilian general in charge of the UN force criticized slow pace of relief that is compounding the suffering of traumatized survivors.
PHOTO: EPA
"The situation remains critical," General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira said in an interview with the official Agencia Brasil.
He said many people were suffering from diarrhea while others, many of them children, were contracting gangrene. Amputations were being performed under horrendous conditions, he said. Most injuries being treated are gashes from collapsing roofs or pieces of zinc roof hidden by the mud that still covers the city, where most survivors walk barefooted.
Anne Poulsen of the UN World Food Program said relief agencies were working around the clock trying to get food to victims -- even using donkeys.
When trucks carrying 7 tonnes of food from Cap-Haitien -- the port to the north -- were blocked by mudslides, "we unloaded the food from trucks and put it on to donkeys and mules to reach localities ... where people had not eaten for a week" since the storm's passage, Poulsen said.
WFP and CARE International distributed 100 tonnes of food in the past three days -- enough to feed 48,000 families for one day, she said.
The director of the WFP Haiti operation, Guy Gavreau, said floods from Jeanne destroyed the rice and fruit harvest in the Artibonite, Haiti's breadbasket, "so now the country can't even feed itself without outside help."
At the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Charles Borromee, four people stood and prayed in the back, unwilling to venture into the disaster zone of overturned pews and trash caked with ankle-deep mud. Outside, a woman among hundreds sheltering at the church brushed her teeth and spat toothpaste into the debris.
A couple walked up, shoes newly waxed and shining, for Mass in a makeshift chapel.
"We don't have anything but we're doing our best," Joselyne Ashalus, 31, said in front of a classroom where she sleeps on the floor with eight other people.
"After all this we have to be respectful and we have to thank God for saving us," she said, grateful that the storm that destroyed their home spared her five children
Ashalus braided one daughter's hair and decorated it with pink and white hair grips. Her other children stood nearby -- a baby with yellow iodine-soaked bandages on both legs, a girl with one on her ankle and a toddler covered in a rash.
Sunday night, lightning bolts lit the blacked-out city, threatening a thunderstorm that would add to the miseries of survivors living on sidewalks and rooftops of flooded homes.
Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue said Saturday the storm killed at least 1,500 people.
On Sunday, the civil defense agency's Abel Nazaire said more bodies were recovered from debris in Gonaives, raising the number of corpses found to 1,330. Another 2,601 people were injured, and 1,056 are missing.
Nazaire acknowledged many of the missing can be presumed dead -- washed out to sea or under the rubble of collapsed homes in areas still inaccessible.
Some 300,000 people are homeless from the storm, including about 200,000 in Gonaives, he said.
A feud has broken out between the top leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on whether to maintain close ties with Russia. The AfD leader Alice Weidel this week slammed planned visits to Russia by some party lawmakers, while coleader Tino Chrupalla voiced a defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The unusual split comes at a time when mainstream politicians have accused the anti-immigration AfD of acting as stooges for the Kremlin and even spying for Russia. The row has also erupted in a year in which the AfD is flying high, often polling above the record 20 percent it
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday vowed that those behind bogus flood control projects would be arrested before Christmas, days after deadly back-to-back typhoons left swathes of the country underwater. Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers — including Marcos’ cousin congressman — have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard or so-called “ghost” infrastructure projects. The Philippine Department of Finance has estimated the nation’s economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (US$2 billion) since 2023 due to corruption in flood control projects. Criminal cases against most of the people implicated are nearly complete, Marcos told reporters. “We don’t file cases for
Ecuadorans are today to vote on whether to allow the return of foreign military bases and the drafting of a new constitution that could give the country’s president more power. Voters are to decide on the presence of foreign military bases, which have been banned on Ecuadoran soil since 2008. A “yes” vote would likely bring the return of the US military to the Manta air base on the Pacific coast — once a hub for US anti-drug operations. Other questions concern ending public funding for political parties, reducing the number of lawmakers and creating an elected body that would
‘ATTACK ON CIVILIZATION’: The culture ministry released drawings of six missing statues representing the Roman goddess of Venus, the tallest of which was 40cm Investigators believe that the theft of several ancient statues dating back to the Roman era from Syria’s national museum was likely the work of an individual, not an organized gang, officials said on Wednesday. The National Museum of Damascus was closed after the heist was discovered early on Monday. The museum had reopened in January as the country recovers from a 14-year civil war and the fall of the 54-year al-Assad dynasty last year. On Wednesday, a security vehicle was parked outside the main gate of the museum in central Damascus while security guards stood nearby. People were not allowed in because
RSS