Desperation in Haiti as Aid Is Snarled, Looters Roam

Hundreds of U.S. troops touched down in shattered Port-au-Prince overnight as U.N. and other aid organizations struggled Friday to get food and water to stricken millions. Fears spread of unrest among the Haitian people in their fourth day of desperation. Looters roamed downtown streets, young men and boys with machetes. "They are scavenging everything. What can you do?" said Michel Legros, 53, as he waited for help to search for seven relatives buried in his collapsed house. Even as the U.S. military began distributing aid, Haiti's U.S. ambassador, Raymond Joseph, made a desperate plea Friday for body bags to help manage the sea of corpses that is swelling around the morgue in Port-au-Prince and lining the city's streets. "We want body bags, because the way they're disposing of some of the corpses is very undignified," Joseph said during brief remarks at the Greater Washington Hatian Relief Center. "We want body bags — a lot of body bags. If you know how to get them, if you know a company that makes them and wants to donate or even sell them." Hard-pressed government workers, meanwhile, were burying thousands of bodies in mass graves. The Red Cross estimates 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in Tuesday's cataclysmic earthquake. More and more, the focus fell on the daunting challenge of getting aid to survivors. United Nations peacekeepers patrolling the capital said people's anger was rising that aid hasn't been distributed quickly, and warned aid convoys to add security to guard against looting.Angry Haitians have reportedly been using corpses to set up roadblocks in Port-au-Prince to protest those delays. Photographer Shaul Schwarz said he saw at least two downtown roadblocks formed with bodies of earthquake victims and rocks. "They are starting to block the roads with bodies," he told Reuters. "It's getting ugly out there, people are fed up with getting no help." On Friday morning, no sign was seen of foreign assistance entering the downtown area, other than a U.S. Navy helicopter flying overhead. Ordinary Haitians sensed the potential for an explosion of lawlessness. "We're worried that people will get a little uneasy," said attendant Jean Reynol, 37, explaining his gas station was ready to close immediately if violence breaks out. "People who have not been eating or drinking for almost 50 hours and are already in a very poor situation," U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva. "If they see a truck with something, or if they see a supermarket which has collapsed, they just rush to get something to eat." The quake's destruction of Port-au-Prince's main prison complicated the security situation. International Red Cross spokesman Marcal Izard said some 4,000 prisoners had escaped and were freely roaming the streets.