Media barred from New Orleans

2005-09-10 07:53

A woman is reunited with one of her pets in Louisianna. (AP)

Baton Rouge - The military will bar journalists and photographers from documenting the recovery of bodies left littering New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, the army general in charge said on Friday.

Lieutenant General Russel Honore, the commander of the relief operation on the United Sates Gulf Coast, said that while the military had allowed reporters covering the catastrophe free rein, it was now slamming the door shut out of respect for the possibly thousands of victims and their families.

"We've had total access to everything we've done - the good, the bad and the ugly - but that operation (the recovery of corpses) will be conducted with dignity and respect for the families," Honore said.

"There will be zero access to that operation. It would not be good to have pictures of people, the deceased shown on any media," Honore said calling for published pictures of corpses to be removed from websites.

Held accountable

"You should hold yourselves accountable for when someone sees and will be able to recognise the home or location that their loved passed in," he told a press conference in the Louisiana capital of Baton Rouge.

Honore said journalists would be restricted from entering parts of the city that have been submerged as the water is slowly drained by pumps, revealing a grisly harvest of corpses in the richest and most powerful country on earth.

But he indicated that reporters crammed into a handful of hotels in the city centre would not be kicked out of the city.

"Not in the area you are in now," he said when asked if reporters movements would be restricted in New Orleans. Some newsmen have reported difficulties in gaining access to the city through military checkpoints.

Honore said his men were conducting house-to-house searches of stricken areas of the city of jazz, marking sports where bodies have been found and alerting federal authorities to collect them.

Soldiers in the city on Friday prevented an AFP photographer from taking pictures of a newly-discovered corpse under a sheet slumped against a wall on the Mississippi riverfront.

A soldier was seen lifting the white sheet and examining the body for identification, wearing purple rubber gloves.

Emergency workers had daubed and orange "V" for victim on the wall above the corpse.

- AFP