Haiti: Pope sends aid
2004-09-28 07:53
Gonaives - Devastating floods unleashed by tropical storm Jeanne are feared to have killed more than 2 000 people in the northern Haitian city of Gonaives, the city's mayor said on Monday, as searchers keep discovering more bodies 10 days after the storm struck.
Thousands more remain homeless after torrential rains and floodwaters ripped through this coastal city, 170km north of Port-au-Prince.
The government, international aid groups and United Nations peacekeepers are trying to bring disaster relief, but gangs of men wielding metal bars have attacked food convoys arriving in Gonaives.
"We don't have an exact toll yet, but our calculations surpass the estimates given by the civil protection authorities," Gonaives mayor Calixte Valentin told local radio.
The Vatican announced on Monday that Pope John Paul II had ordered the donation of $100 000 to flood victims in Haiti.
Official death toll
Civil protection authorities put the official death at least 1 330, with 1 056 remaining missing.
Gonaives has a population of between 200 000 and 250 000 people.
The city was wrecked by the storm. Hundreds of inhabitants have set up temporary homes in Gonaives' central cathedral, while health officials fear outbreaks of diarrhoea and typhoid fever.
Valentin said another 50 corpses were recovered in the Dolan neighbourhood where they had been buried in a mass grave.
"In total, 10 common graves have been dug for bodies that we have found in recent hours among the rubble of destroyed homes, under mounds of mud and along the shoreline where bodies have been washed up by the sea," the mayor said.
Valentin criticised what he said was a lack of security and order in the distribution of much needed food and aid.
International troops in a UN peacekeeping force have been mobilised to secure key food distribution points and stop them being over-run by starving Haitians.
The troops fired warning shots into the air and detonated tear gas over the weekend to disperse mobs who threatened to ransack some food centres.
Haiti's interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue on Sunday raised the prospect of temporary evacuations in Gonaives.
"We're studying the possibility of evacuating parts of the city, by neighbourhood, in order to clean and disinfect homes to diminish the risk of epidemics," Latortue said.
Civil strife
Further aggravating aid efforts, the main hospital in Gonaives was also struck by the floods, which are believed to have killed several hundred bedridden patients.
One of the world's poorest countries, Haiti has the worst deforestation in the western hemisphere, depriving many areas of natural protection from flooding. It had already been ravaged by killer floods in May and deadly civil strife earlier this year.
Countries from the Americas and Europe have pledged emergency funds and shipped several tonnes of aid, including food and medicine.
- AFP