Tens of thousands dumped in mass graves in Haiti

Mass graves were being dug on a hillside north of Haiti's capital today using earth-movers to bury 10,000 earthquake victims as relief workers warned the death toll could increase.

Clinics have 12-day patient backlogs, untreated injuries are festering and makeshift camps housing thousands of survivors could foster disease, experts said.

"The next health risk could include outbreaks of diarrhoea, respiratory tract infections and other diseases among hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in overcrowded camps with poor or non-existent sanitation," said Dr Greg Elder from, Doctors Without Borders.

The death toll is estimated at 200,000, according to Haitian government figures, with 80,000 buried in mass graves. An estimated two million are homeless, up from 1.5 million, and 250,000 are in need of urgent aid.

In the sparsely populated wasteland of Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, burial workers said the macabre task of handling the never-ending flow of bodies was traumatising.

The dead stick out at all angles from the mass graves - tall mounds of chalky dirt, the limbs of men, women and children frozen together in death.

"I received 10,000 bodies yesterday alone," said Foultone Fequiert, 38.

Workers say they have no time to give the dead proper religious burials or follow pleas from the international community that bodies be buried in shallow graves from which loved ones might eventually retrieve them.

"We just dump them in, and fill it up," said Luckner Clerzier, 39, who was helping guide trucks to another grave site farther up the road.

More than eight days after the magnitude-7.0 earthquake, rescuers searched late into the night for survivors with dogs and sonar equipment.

One rescue was reported. The International Medical Corps said it was caring for a child found in ruins yesterday. The boy's uncle said relatives pulled the five-year-old from the wreckage of his home after searching for a week.

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

"I have seen so many children, so many children," said Fequiert. "I cannot sleep at night and, if I do, it is a constant nightmare."