HAITI: Haiti began burying hundreds of flood victims in mass graves yesterday while emergency food was distributed to some of the thousands of people made homeless by Tropical Storm Jeanne.
More than 700 died, and 1,000 were still missing after walls of water roared down from the Caribbean country's deforested hills over the weekend, and left the northern cities of Gonaives and Port-de-Paix under a crust of mud.
Elie Cantave, the top government official for the Artibonite region around Gonaives, a city of 200,000, said public workers and UN peacekeepers would bury about 200 of the dead yesterday to prevent the spread of disease.
The UN's World Food Programme said its first convoy of trucks carrying 40 metric tons of food arrived Tuesday night and aid agencies were distributing rice, beans, cooking oil and loaves of fresh bread.
"At this point we think at least 175,000 people are affected across the country. Many of them were already very vulnerable and now, they have lost their homes, their entire crops, their animals and the few belongings they had," said the WFP country director, Guy Gauvreau.
The WFP has long provided food for 500,000 people in the poorest country of the Americas, and increased operations after a violent revolt forced ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to flee into exile on February 29th.
Devastating floods and mudslides in May, in which about 2,000 people died, further aggravated the humanitarian disaster facing the county. Haiti is chronically vulnerable to flooding because of widespread deforestation caused by Haitians digging up roots to make charcoal for cooking. UN forces maintaining the peace after Aristide's departure were helping with rescue and relief efforts. The international Red Cross, meanwhile, began a worldwide appeal for $3.3 million (€2.7 million) to help the flood victims.
Haitian-American hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean joined aid workers.He said he was trying to organise a "peace concert" for later this year featuring top international stars and open to up to one million Haitians - an eighth of the island's population.
Jeanne, which became a hurricane for the second time, also killed 11 people in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and two in the US Caribbean territory of Puerto Rico. - (Reuters)