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PORT-AU-PRINCE - Haitians cowered in fear Saturday as armed looters scavenged through their ruined capital filled with the stench of rotting corpses after the earthquake said by the UN to be the worst disaster it had ever faced.
As US troops tried to unblock an aid logjam and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton headed to the disaster zone, the Haiti government admitted it was no longer able to function properly.
And while international rescuers continued to work around the clock in tropical temperatures, their efforts were hampered by a lack of fuel and transport as the sense of despair set in among exhausted survivors.
"The streets smell of death," said Talulum Saint Fils, who sold her jewellery to pay for one-way bus tickets for her family out of Portau-Prince.
"There is no assistance of any kind, and our children simply cannot live like animals."
The Haitian capital -- insecure at the best of times -- is now devoid of a functioning police force, bringing fears of a dystopian war of all against all in the wake of Tuesday's huge 7.0-magnitude earthquake.
"Men suddenly appeared with machetes to steal money," said Evelyne Buino, a young beautician, after a long night in a neighbourhood not far from the ruined city centre. "This is just the beginning."
Thousands of criminals were on the loose, having escaped from the city's collapsed jail, and there were widespread reports of robberies.
In the bustling Marche en Fer, or Iron Market, one of the poorest neighbourhoods, teenage looters scuttled over the concrete debris and ignored
piles of dead bodies on the street in their desperate bid to dig out supplies.
"People are hungry, thirsty. They are left on their own," said Leon Meleste, an Adventist sporting a white "New York" baseball cap.
"It is increasingly dangerous. The police doesn't exist, people are doing what they want."
"This is a historic disaster. We have never been confronted with such a disaster in the UN memory. It is like no other," Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told AFP in Geneva.
In the town of Leogane, west of the capital, 80-90 percent of buildings were damaged or destroyed, and "No local government infrastructure remains," she said.
A vanguard of the 10,000 US troops being deployed to Haiti has taken control of the airport, clogged with tons of relief supplies, and has begun the first distribution of aid to quell the threat of violence.
Aid is also being distributed from the USS Carl Vinson, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier where 19 helicopters have been carrying out limited aid drops.
"We have lift, we have communications, we have some command and control, but we don't have much relief supplies to offer," said Rear Admiral Ted Branch aboard the carrier.
Clinton said she will travel to Haiti to see the earthquake relief efforts first hand, deliver more supplies and meet Haitian President Rene Preval.
"We will also be conveying very directly and personally to the Haitian people our long-term, unwavering support, solidarity and sympathies to reinforce President Obama's message that they are not facing this crisis alone," said Clinton.
The Haitian government is operating out of a police station at the airport, where Preval, looking exhausted with dark pockets under his eyes, said "the government has lost its capacity to function properly, but it has not collapsed."
In an interview with AFP, Preval praised the massive international relief effort but warned that the aid operation remains uncoordinated.
He said 74 planes from countries including the United States, France and Venezuela, had arrived at Port-au-Prince's overwhelmed airport in a single day.
At the city's harbour late Friday, a swarm of small boats surrounded the first supply ship to arrive as it approached a crumbled pier with supplies from Jeremie, a Haitian town about 200 kilometres from Port-au-Prince.
Bananas will provide local residents with necessary food while coal will help boil water to avoid spread of disease.
Haitian officials said at least 50,000 people had been killed and 1.5 million left homeless in the Caribbean nation, one of the poorest countries in the world, which has long witnessed violence and bloodshed.
In Leogane, which before the quake had a population of 134,000, "According to the local police, between 5,000 to 10,000 people have been killed and most bodies are still in the collapsed buildings," Byrs said.
Rescue efforts are however being hindered by three major constraints -- transport, communications and fuel.
"Transport resources are very limited and hampered by the fact that the fuel stocks are running low," said Byrs. "Another constraint is the lack of ambulances."
With food in such short supply, vendors were selling plates of pasta for 100 gourds (2.5 US dollars), 10 times more than before the quake.
The Haitian president called on his countrymen to show patience and defended the government against accusations of inaction.
"No one is alone in his situation. I understand that people suffer because they have relatives under the rubble, but they must understand that there are thousands of people in that very same situation," said Preval.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon is set to visit Haiti on Sunday after the world body appealed for 562 million US dollars from donors. The UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was hit hard by the quake, with 37 of its 12,000 employees confirmed dead and some 330 still unaccounted for.
- AFP/ir
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