World leaders have stepped up to pledge aid to rebuild a devastated Haiti as earthquake survivors there still wait today for food, water and medicine.
Four days after a massive earthquake killed up to 200,000 people international rescue teams are still finding people alive under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince.
Hundreds of thousands of hungry Haitians were desperately waiting for help, but logistical logjams kept major relief from reaching most victims, many of them sheltering in makeshift camps on streets strewn with debris and decomposing bodies.
In the widespread absence of authority, looters robbed collapsed stores on the city's shattered main commercial boulevard, carrying off T-shirts, bags, toys and anything else they could find. Fighting broke out between groups of looters carrying knives, ice-picks, hammers and rocks.
Many Haitians streamed out of the city on foot with suitcases on their heads or jammed in cars to find food and shelter in the countryside, and flee aftershocks and violence. Many others crowded the airport hoping to get on planes leaving.
"I'm going there with a very heavy heart. This is one of the worst humanitarian crises in decades. The damage, destruction, loss of life is just overwhelming," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said as he boarded a flight for Haiti today.
The United Nations was feeding 40,000 people a day and hoped to increase that to one million within two weeks, he said. "The challenge at this time is how to co-ordinate all of this outpouring of assistance."
As people turned more desperate and in the widespread absence of authority, looters swarmed over collapsed stores carrying out food and anything else they could find. Fighting broke out between groups carrying knives, ice-picks, hammers and rocks.
President Rene Preval said 3,500 US troops will help overstretched UN peacekeepers and Haitian police guarantee security in the capital.
"We have 2,000 police in Port-au-Prince who are severely affected. And 3,000 bandits escaped from prison [during the quake]. This gives you an idea of how bad the situation is," Mr Preval told reporters.
Residents awoke to find the bodies of thieves lynched by mobs or shot by men claiming to be plainclothes police. A Reuters journalist said he saw the burned body of a man locals said was set ablaze by angry residents who caught him stealing, and two young men lying on the ground with bullet wounds to the head and arms tied behind their backs.
"Everything in Haiti is broken. All the ministries are fallen. There is not one person in the country without a friend or family member dead," said Information Minister Marie Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue. "When they say the government is not fast, we are truly doing our best."
President Barack Obama promised help as US secretary of state Hillary Clinton flew to Haiti, where the government gave the United States control over the congested main airport to guide aid flights from around the world.
"We're moving forward with one of the largest relief efforts in our history to save lives and deliver relief that averts an even larger catastrophe," said Mr Obama yesterday, flanked at the White House by predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who will lead a charity drive to help Haiti.
Ms Clinton told Haitians the United States will ensure their country emerges "stronger and better" from the disaster. "We will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead," she said after meeting Mr Preval at the airport.
But on the streets of Port-au-Prince, where scarce police patrols fired occasional shots and tear gas to try to disperse looters, the distribution of aid appeared random, chaotic and minimal. Downtown, young men could be seen carrying pistols.
There were jostling scrums for food and water as US military helicopters swooped down to throw out boxes of water bottles and rations. A reporter also saw foreign aid workers tossing packets of food to desperate Haitians.
Looting has been sporadic since Tuesday's earthquake, which flattened large parts of the capital. But it appeared to widen on Saturday as people became more desperate.
Haiti is the Western Hemisphere's poorest country and has for decades struggled with devastating storms, floods and political unrest. Around 9,000 UN peacekeepers have provided security here since a 2004 uprising ousted one president.
The UN mission responsible for security in Haiti lost at least 40 of its members when its headquarters collapsed. The UN said the mission's chief, Hedi Annabi of Tunisia, his deputy Luiz Carlos da Costa of Brazil and UN police commissioner in Haiti, Doug Coates of Canada, were killed.
Four days after the 7.0 magnitude quake, aftershocks were felt every few hours in the capital, terrifying survivors and sending rubble and dust tumbling from buildings.
US rescuers worked through the night to dig out survivors from one collapsed supermarket where as many as 100 people could have been trapped inside. They were about to give up, when they were told a supermarket cashier had managed to call someone in Miami to say she was still alive inside.
Trucks piled with corpses have been ferrying bodies to hurriedly excavated mass graves outside the city, but thousands of bodies are still believed buried under the rubble.
According to the BBC, initial reports from the epicentre of the earthquake suggest damage there is even worse than in Port-au-Prince, with almost every structure destroyed in Leogane, west of the capital.
Dozens of countries have sent planes with rescue teams, doctors, tents, food, medicine and other supplies, but faced a bottleneck at Port-au-Prince's small airport.
Air traffic control in Port-au-Prince, hampered by damage to the airport's tower, was taken over by the US military with backup from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, which arrived off Haiti on Friday.
Navy helicopters are taking water and rations ashore and ferrying injured people to a field hospital near the airport.
Reuters