23291: (Chamberlain) Death toll in Haiti floods rises to 1,650 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Sept 26 (Reuters) - The death toll in
disastrous flooding in Haiti has risen to some 1,650, with about 800 people
still missing, a government official said on Sunday.
     Hurricane Jeanne, which hurtled ashore on Florida's east coast on
Saturday, lashed Haiti with torrential rains as a tropical storm a week
ago.
     Flood waters and mud cascaded into the northern city of Gonaives and
other parts of the north and northwest, leaving tens of thousands of people
with nothing in the poorest country in the Americas.
     Carl Murat Cantave, a Haitian government official, said the toll was
now 1,650. The toll could rise well above 2,000 as more bodies are
recovered from Gonaives, a port city of 200,000, and outlying areas.
     Efforts to distribute food, water and other relief supplies have been
hampered by security problems and on Saturday a convoy of government trucks
bringing aid was attacked by gunmen and people with machetes as it entered
the city, officials said.
     There have been several incidents of attacks by gangs in the city, as
well as scuffles among people desperate for food and water. Street gangs
rule many of Haiti's squalid slums, and helped lead a bloody revolt that
forced former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to flee into exile on Feb.
29.
     One Gonaives resident, Josepha Jean-Louis, 39, said that a cousin of
hers went to a distribution center to get a food hand-out and later in the
day their house was attacked by armed men who took the food and ran.
     United Nations peacekeepers are in the city to protect food
distribution centers and help with logistics. They are part of a
Brazilian-led U.N. force sent to maintain order in the country after
Aristide's ouster.
     Paul Gustave Magloire, a special advisor to interim Prime Minister
Gerard Latortue, said of the security problems "the government is doing
everything possible to address the situation but the population should also
cooperate."
     "We count on the U.N. troops to help us because the police do not have
the means," he said.
     A week after the flooding engulfed much of Gonaives, many people were
still living on the roofs of their homes.
     A spokeswoman for the World Food Programme, Anne Poulsen, said that
over the last three days, some 120 tons of food had been distributed,
enough food for about 200,000 people for a day.
     "What we did so far is only a beginning. We'll keep on getting food in
there ... what we hope is to get resources to help at least 100,000 people
for at least 5 months, that's our estimation."
     "There are areas up north of Gonaives where people are completely
isolated, the roads are washed away. We used donkeys and mules after the
trucks couldn't go any further."
     "This is a tragedy for the people of Gonaives and for Haiti," she
said.
     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 flooding in the south of the country.