- GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) -- They
mob aid convoys, break into homes to steal food and shoot anyone who gets
in their way. Street gangsters have put aid workers squarely in their
sights
and are subjecting weary storm survivors to life-threatening delays in
getting food and water.
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- The failure of Haiti's government to disarm gangs,
including
the Cannibal Army that started the revolution that ousted president
Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, has created a climate of insecurity that jeopardizes lives after
the calamity visited on Gonaives by Tropical Storm Jeanne.
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- "Things are very bad here. People are insecure,
and we have to fight for everything," said Rony Coq, 30, a member
of a gang called the Bottle Army because its members fling bottles at
enemies.
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- Mr. Coq's gang operates in Cassolet, a maze of concrete
slum homes that was mired in up to two metres of mud Tuesday ó 10
days after Jeanne.
-
- Nearby, a human vertebra stuck out of a pile of sludge
topped by a tire, one of the unclaimed flood victims that residents buried
because so many were rotting before officials ordered mass burials.
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- Officials say more than 1,500 people died in the storm
and some 900 are missing, many of whom are presumed among dead. Most of
the victims were in Gonaives, Haiti's third-largest city, where four-fifths
of the 250,000 residents were left homeless.
-
- The security chief for the UN stabilization mission in
Haiti, John Harrison of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, visited Cassolet
on Tuesday to scout for a safe place to distribute food.
-
- Earlier, only about 40 people lined up for food at an
aid centre in another neighbourhood where UN peacekeepers from Brazil had
to shoot into the air Monday to control hundreds of people who rioted when
they were prevented from looting the food.
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- "It's very difficult to get food. We come every
day ... People are getting very frustrated," said Manette Jean, 31,
one of the few people to show up Tuesday.
-
- She said a piece of metal stuck in her foot when she
was shoved and nearly trampled during a previous visit to a food
distribution
centre, but that she had to come so she can feed her five children.
-
- Mr. Harrison had hoped to use Gonaives' port, but his
group found the dock in the hands of armed men. "There's a big problem
with gangs," he said. "I think things could get
worse."
-
- That was bad news for the World Food Program, which was
chartering a ship to bring food to Gonaives.
-
- Jouthe Joseph of the humanitarian group CARE said Tuesday
that about 10 tonnes of food had been lost to looters in Gonaives, out
of 175 tonnes sent in by international aid groups over the past week, which
allowed them to feed about 98,000 people.
-
- Mr. Joseph's figures did not include local aid trucks
that have been looted nor a government convoy held up by armed men at the
entrance to the city.
-
- That flashpoint for looters was being secured Tuesday
by Uruguayan peacekeepers. Interior Minister Herard Abraham said the
Uruguayans
needed time to settle in but would improve the situation within a few days.
"Security will improve," he promised.
-
- The United Nations sent 150 more peacekeepers to Gonaives
over the weekend to reinforce some 600 soldiers already in the city as
part of the stabilization force brought to Haiti after Aristide's
ouster.
-
- Brazilian Gen. Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira, commander
of the UN force, said Monday that he has only 3,000 of the 6,700 soldiers
he needs and could use more help from Haitian police.
-
- Mr. Harrison, the Canadian, also complained about the
police. "There is no security right now. There are no patrols. There
are no functioning police. We're on our own," he said.
-
- But Haiti's force, which has only about 3,000 officers
in a country of 8 million people, remains demoralized and poorly equipped
since rebels chased them from their stations, killing dozens, in the
February
uprising that forced Mr. Aristide to leave the country.
-
- On Tuesday, the Gonaives police's only working vehicle
happened on a truck being looted of bottled water by a gleeful mob, but
the officers kept driving.
-
- Police Commissioner Abner Vilme confirmed Tuesday that
street gangs were breaking into people's homes in the blacked-out city
at night. He said his men ó down to about 15 since the storm
ó
had tried to negotiate with the gangs but the gangsters did not keep
promises
to behave.
-
- Some of the gangs are purely criminal, but many are
allied
and armed by rival political parties. Some, like members of the Cannibal
Army, say they were armed by Mr. Aristide's henchmen to terrorize his
political
opponents, but it later turned on Mr. Aristide.
-
- Caribbean leaders have refused to recognize the
U.S.-backed
interim government, saying it unconstitutionally replaced a democratically
elected president and because interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue
scandalized
the region by hailing as "liberators" rebel leaders that include
two convicted of murders during a military regime.
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