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.
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
RSS