New Orleans' mayor issued an urgent plea for relief of his flooded city as gunshots and looting hampered the evacuation of desperate crowds trying to escape Hurricane Katrina's destruction.
"This is a desperate SOS," Mayor Ray Nagin said in a statement read by CNN.
"Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough buses. Currently the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe and we are running out of supplies for 15,000 to 25,000 people," Mr Nagin said.
Thousands of people in New Orleans and the US Gulf Coast have died in the aftermath of the hurricane Katrina, a US senator said this afternoon. Democratic senator Mary Landrieu made the claim at a press conference in Baton Rouge today as rescue workers continued efforts to evacuate tens of thousands of residents who are stranded without electricity, food, shelter or drinking water.
However, efforts have been hampered by a contining breakdown in law and order, as looters rampaged through the flooded streets of New Orleans today.
Shell-shocked New Orleans officials tried to clamp down on looting in the historic jazz city reduced to a swampy ruin by Monday's storm. Bodies floated in the streets, attackers armed with axes stripped hospitals of medicine and authorities said they could still only guess at how many people had died.
Congress was expected to cut short its summer break to pass emergency financial aid for hurricane victims, according to congressional aides who said an initial package could be around $10 billion.
An operation to bus more than 20,000 refugees to the Houston Astrodome was suspended temporarily when shots were fired at helicopters being used in the evacuation, a local government spokeswoman in Houston said.
The incident was part of the chaos that prompted New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to order police to drop rescue operations to fight the crime that gripped the besieged city.
Angry Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco told reporters: "We will do what it takes to bring law and order to our area.
"I'm just furious. It's intolerable," she said of the growing crime wave.
As more National Guard and army troops headed into the region to help with relief efforts, thousands of people waited hours or waded through floodwaters to catch rides out of the city.
Storm survivors sheltered in the Superdome football stadium scrambled to get out of the city, clambering onto 300 buses that shipped them 350 miles west to the Astrodome in Houston.
The first of more than 20,000 people began arriving early today at the stadium, where Red Cross workers set out thousands of cots and "comfort kits" that included various toiletries and a meal.
But the operation was put on hold when shots were fired at Chinook military helicopters being used to transport the evacuees.
Elsewhere in New Orleans, gunshots repeatedly rang out and fires flared as looters broke into stores, houses, hospitals and office buildings - some in search of food, others looking for anything of value.
Similar scenes were playing out in Mississippi where looters ransacked stores in Biloxi and Gulfport, both shattered by the storm that hit the US Gulf Coast on Monday with 140mph winds and a 30-foot storm surge.
Hundreds of people are confirmed and the toll is expected to rise into the thousands after what officials say was one of the worst natural disasters in US history.
Mr Nagin estimated it would be 12 to 16 weeks before residents of the city could return. A million people fled the New Orleans area before Katrina arrived.
Amid the gloom was good news that floodwaters had started to drop in New Orleans, which is mostly below sea level and was inundated by water from Lake Pontchartrain after levees broke.
The army said it would it would open holes in parts of the city's levee system to let water drain out while at the same time attempting to fix several large breaches torn out by Katrina's storm surge. Officials estimated it could take a month to get the water out.
Locals are frustrated with relief efforts, however. "Many people didn't have the financial means to get out," said a resident of Biloxi, Mississippi. "That's a crime and people are angry about it."