Tag: Open Thread

The government’s decision came despite the rescue on Friday of two people who spent 10 days buried in the rubble, but officials said it was aimed at letting aid workers focus on getting supplies to hundreds of thousands of people.

The United Nations warned meanwhile that Haiti’s upcoming rainy season — a source of other disasters that have plagued the country in recent years — could pose a new threat to beleaguered survivors of the 7.0-magnitude quake.

US forces also slowly reopened the main port to bring in huge aid shipments, with international assistance finally gathering pace 10 days after the disaster killed at least 75,000 people and left 500,000 homeless.

A televised benefit hosted by George Clooney and featuring performances from Wyclef Jean, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna and others was, meanwhile, set to be screened on US networks and streamed live on Internet sites.

In a bid to move an estimated 500,000 left destitute by the January 12 quake, the Haitian government said it was seeking to relocate them out of squalid, stinking tent cities into housing outside Port-au-Prince.

“The government has made available to people free transportation. A large operation is taking place: we’re in the process of relocating homeless people,” said Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime.

The 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck at 6:03 am (1103 GMT) Wednesday, eight days after the Haitian capital was leveled by a massive temblor in which at least 75,000 people were killed, and a million left homeless.

“All Haitians are going to die because they are cursed,” said one mother now camping amid the squalor of the Port-au-Prince rubble where countless bodies still lie buried.

Researchers analyzing water samples have discovered fragments of Asian carp DNA in Lake Michigan, although there is still no evidence that that fast-breeding fish have breached electric barriers set up along Chicago-area waterways.

“Clearly this is not good news,” said Major General John Peabody, commanding general of the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Great Lakes and Ohio River division.

In a spectacular move, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne division landed in at least four choppers to secure the ruined presidential palace, a once elegant white building now surrounded by a stinking, squalid refugee camp.

From the palace, a 100-strong squad of soldiers headed on foot to the city’s general hospital, swamped with injured after the catastrophic 7.0-magnitude quake seven days ago, which the Haitian government says killed at least 70,000.

Despite the massive international effort spearheaded by the United States, security fears grew as television pictures showed troops in combat gear firing off rounds and hauling looters to the ground in the capital Port-au-Prince.

The Red Cross warned that violence by desperate Haitians was growing, although Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, the top US officer on the ground, insisted: “The level of violence we see now is below pre-earthquake levels.”

After hours of painstaking digging through the ruins, a team from Florida unearthed a seven-year-old girl, a man aged 34 and a 50-year-old woman in the ruins of a store as dawn broke in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Later hundreds of rioters ransacked Hyppolite market in the heart of the devastated city as survivors besieged hospitals and make-shift field clinics, some carrying the injured on their backs or on carts.