Hungry flood victims loot food trucks

ARGENTINE UN peacekeepers were forced to fire into the air to try to keep back crowds of hungry flood victims who mobbed and looted trucks arriving with aid shipments one week after devastating floods in Haiti.

The death toll in the floods has risen to an estimated 1,500, with many more missing and presumed dead.

One boy was struck and killed by a relief truck on Saturday as crowds pressed up against the gates of a warehouse storing food aid, said Roseline Corvil, an official of the aid agency CARE International.

The boy, believed to be 13, was hit as the driver attempted to leave.

“I presume that he did not see the child,” she said.

UN peacekeepers were bringing in reinforcements to try to keep order in the north-western city of Gonaives, where the floods brought by Tropical Storm Jeanne took their deadliest toll.

Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue estimated more than 1,500 dead.

The final toll could be much higher.

Officials had recovered 1,286 bodies, and listed 1,129 others as missing, said Dieufort Deslorges, a spokesman for Haiti’s civil protection agency.

About 300,000 are homeless, most in Gonaives.

The government is considering a rotating evacuation of the mud-coated city to allow clean-up operations.

The plan is still under discussion, but the idea is to move people temporarily to tent camps while workers clean and disinfect one neighbourhood at a time.

With gang members trying to steal food out of the hands of people at aid centres, 140 Uruguayan soldiers were on their way to reinforce about 600 UN peacekeepers already in Gonaives, said Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, a spokesman for the UN mission.

“Security is one of our major concerns,” he said.

At least three aid trucks were attacked in Gonaives on Saturday, and distributions descended into chaos.

As one truck carrying bottled water drove through downtown, hundreds of people swarmed in, and when they refused to back off, Argentine troops fired several shots in the air and threw a smoke grenade.

The crowd retreated, then returned. When the driver decided it was fruitless to resist, people climbed all over the truck, some gulping bottles of water, others throwing boxes to friends. Only part of a government aid shipment was handed out because the crowd grew too unruly, said Youri Latortue, a cousin of the prime minister and his security adviser.

After handing out food, water and clothes from eight trucks, he decided to send six other trucks to a warehouse to give workers time to better organise. “I don’t want people to get injured,” he said.