Bodies used in barricades
2010-01-16 22:05
Special Report
There is not much left of the city's numerous churches, beside crosses and the occasional surviving stained glass window...
Carrefour - Barricades of burning tyres, rubble and at least four bodies blocked the main road out of the Haitian capital to nearby Carrefour on Saturday as residents held a protest demanding the removal of piles of rotting corpses.
"They already took some bodies away, but there are more, many more," said bystander Charles Weber, a 53-year-old voodoo priest, in the crowd of at least three dozen protesters surrounding the smouldering roadblock.
As Weber spoke, a police car from the overwhelmed Haitian national force was forced to make a rapid u-turn by the residents.
UN officials warn they cannot extend their aid operation to outlying areas until security there can be confirmed.
The United Nations and other international aid agencies are concentrating their humanitarian effort in the devastated centre of Port-au-Prince.
A tomb for 10 000 people
A UN assessment team found on Saturday that Carrefour, a poor commune directly west of the Haitian capital, with 334 000 inhabitants, was 40-50% destroyed in Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake.
Up to 90% of the buildings in the nearby town of Leogane, also to the west of Port-au-Prince, were damaged in the earthquake, the UN said.
Leogane, the "worst-affected area" outside the capital, according to Elisabeth Byrs, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, is the current tomb for up to 10 000 people, most of them trapped inside collapsed buildings.
UN officials have set up an operations centre at the main Port-au-Prince airport to coordinate the search and rescue efforts of 27 teams arriving from around the world.
The massive earthquake has produced a steady stream of bodies to mass graves in Port-au-Prince, with estimates of the death toll well into the tens of thousands.
At least two communal graves have been dug in the capital to try to deal with the catastrophe.
Haiti Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said he believed some 15 000 people had already been interred across the stricken city.
- SAPA
