In the Cite Soleil slum, US soldiers and Brazilian UN peacekeeping troops distributed food. Lunie Marcelin, 57, said the donations will help her and her six grown children, “but it is not enough. We need more.’’
Crews filling Haiti’s mass graves with bodies reported ever higher numbers over the weekend: More than 150,000 quake victims from the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince have been buried by the government, officials said. That doesn’t count those still under the debris, carried off by relatives, or killed in the outlying quake zone.
Yet another aftershock, one of more than 50 since the great quake Jan. 12, shook Port-au-Prince yesterday, registering 4.7 in magnitude, the US Geological Survey said. There were no immediate reports of further damage.
The Haitian government urged many of the estimated 600,000 homeless huddled in open areas of Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million, to look for better shelter with relatives or others in the countryside. Some 200,000 were believed already to have done so, most taking advantage of free government transportation. Others formed a steady stream out of the city yesterday.
With rescues now increasingly unlikely, the government has declared an end to such operations, shifting the focus to caring for the thousands in squalid, makeshift camps.
International aid workers searched for sites to erect tent cities for quake refugees on the capital’s outskirts, but such short-term solutions were still weeks away, said the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental agency.
“We also need tents. There is a shortage of tents,’’ said Vincent Houver, the Geneva-based agency’s chief of mission in Haiti. Their Port-au-Prince warehouse has 10,000 family-size tents, but some 100,000 are needed, he said. The organization has appealed for $30 million for that and other needs, and has received two-thirds of that so far.
In the aftermath of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake, the casualty estimates have been tentative.
