23268: (Chamberlain) Gunmen steal food from Haiti flood victims (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Gunmen raided homes and
stole food from Haitians outside aid distribution centers as U.N. troops
struggled on Friday to maintain order in the chaos left by floods in which
2,000 people may have died.
     A spokesman for a Brazilian-led U.N. force patrolling the Caribbean
nation following the ouster earlier this year of former President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide said 140 Uruguayan soldiers were sent to guard food
convoys after they also came under attack near the city of Gonaives, which
has been devastated by Tropical Storm Jeanne.
     The spokesman, Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, said armed gangs had tried to
seize food directly from the distribution centers set up in Gonaives by aid
agencies, and had forcibly grabbed food from residents as they left the
centers.
     "The gangs are still in Gonaives, it is a fact," Kongo-Doudou said.
"We are trying to find the best way to cope with the situation."
     He knew of no injuries and did not know the identity of the attackers,
but residents of the port city of 200,000, many of whom have had little if
any food since Sunday, blamed gangs from a neighboring community.
     The secretary general of the Haitian Red Cross, Berthony Marlet, said
additional security was badly needed. He had heard children crying for help
as gunmen entered their homes to rob them of newly distributed food.
     "Gunmen have attacked residents who just got assistance and now they
are attacking humanitarian convoys. We definitely need more security on the
ground," Marlet said.
     Kongo-Doudou said U.N. agencies had delivered about 120 tonnes of food
since Gonaives and other areas in the north and northwest of the poorest
country in the Americas were buried under a wall of water and an avalanche
of mud last weekend.
     The official death toll from Tropical Storm Jeanne -- now a hurricane
bearing down on the Bahamas and Florida -- stood at 1,180 and another 1,210
were missing, said Dieufort Deslorges, an official with Haiti's civil
protection office.
     "We consider people dead only when we find the bodies and bury them,
but we don't expect those we call missing to reappear," Deslorges said.
     Apart from street gangs, which rule many of Haiti's squalid slums
which helped lead a revolt that forced Aristide to flee into exile on Feb.
29, officials said flood victims also fought each other over relief
supplies.
     Large crowds gathered outside distribution centers in Gonaives,
pushing and shoving. Desperately hungry people grabbed food from each
others' hands in the city where Haiti declared its independence from France
200 years ago after a slave revolt.
     "We understand that those people have been going without food for
days...," Kongo-Doudou said.
     Outside one center, 11-year-old Joasil Monfort stood shirtless and
shoeless, clad only in mud-covered shorts and with his arms crossed over
his stomach.
     "I have not seen my mother and sister. Nobody can tell me where they
are," said the dazed boy. "I was going to drown. Someone grabbed me and put
me on the roof," he said.
     He said he had eaten food handed to him by a stranger.
     Kongo-Doudou said the United Nations would ask international donors
next week for additional food aid.
     Humanitarian organization CARE on Friday launched an appeal for $3
million to provide aid over the next three months.
     "It's a brutal situation and another spoke in Haiti's cycle of
misery," Abby Maxman, CARE's director in Haiti, said in a statement.
     Haiti is prone to deadly floods because 98 percent of its forests have
been chopped down, largely to make charcoal for cooking. In May, about
2,000 people died in widespread mudslides on the Haitian-Dominican border.