Security forces struggle to protect supplies

UN peacekeepers and US troops have been helping keep order around aid deliveries and clinics in the stricken city, which seemed relatively calm yesterday, even if looters continued to pillage pockets of downtown.

Police stood by as people made off with food and mobile phones from shattered shops, saying they were trying to save stores that are still undamaged.

“It is not easy but we try to protect what we can,” said officer Belimaire Laneau.

Young men with machetes fought over packages of baby diapers within sight of the body of a young woman who had been shot in the head. Witnesses said police had shot her, but officers in the vicinity denied it.

Meanwhile, a flotilla of rescue vessels led by the US hospital ship Comfort has steamed into Port-au-Prince harbour to help fill gaps in the struggling global effort to deliver water, food and medical help.

Dr Greg Elder, deputy operations manager for Doctors Without Borders in Haiti, said that patients were dying of sepsis from untreated wounds and that some of the group’s posts had 10- to 12-day backups of patients.

Adding to the terror, a 5.9-magnitude aftershock shook Haiti’s capital on Wednesday, sending people screaming into the streets. Some buildings collapsed and an undertaker said one woman died of a heart attack. Surgical teams and patients were forced to evacuate temporarily from at least one hospital.

At United Nations headquarters in New York, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said it was believed 3 million people are affected. Vast, makeshift camps and settlements have sprung up for survivors.

Joseph St. Juste and his five-year-old daughter, Jessica, were among 50,000 people spending their nights at a golf course. He is afraid to stay in his home because of the aftershocks.

The survivors have put up shelters of bedsheets or cardboard boxes on fairways that snake up the hill toward a country club where US paratroopers give out food daily.

St. Juste, a 36-year-old bus driver, wakes up every day and goes out to find food and water for his daughter.

“I wake up for her,” he said. “Life is hard anymore. I’ve got to get out of Haiti. There is no life in Haiti.”