Asia-Pacific

Haitians pray, cry for help in the ruins

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-01-18 11:00

Haitians pray, cry for help in the ruins

A woman receives treatment at the General hospital in downtown Port-au-Prince January 17, 2010. [Agencies]

In the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Delmas, a crowd gathered Sunday around the bodies of two accused looters, who had been beaten to death by angry residents. Onlookers said they were among 4,000 prisoners who escaped when the main prison collapsed in the quake.

Angry survivors loitered amid piles of burning garbage in the Bel-Air slum. "White guys, get the hell out!" they shouted in apparent frustration at the sight of more and more foreigners in their streets who were not delivering help.

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They also sounded furious with President Rene Preval, who hasn't been seen at a rescue site or gone on radio to address the nation since the quake struck.

"Preval out! Aristide come back!" some shouted, appealing for a return of the populist Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was ousted in 2004. From his South African exile, Aristide said last week he wants to return to Haiti, but spoke of no concrete plans to do so.

Work went on, meanwhile, perhaps in its desperate final hours, to find survivors buried in the vast rubble of Port-au-Prince.

At the U.N. headquarters destroyed in the quake, rescuers lifted a Danish staff member alive from the ruins, just 15 minutes after Secretary-General Ban visited the site, where U.N. mission chief Hedi Annabi and at least 39 other staff members were killed. The rescued man was talking and smiling as he was whisked away for medical treatment. Hundreds of peacekeepers and other U.N. staff remain missing.

At a collapsed Caribbean Supermarket where search teams from Florida and New York City worked overnight, a policeman reported that three people had been pulled out alive around 6 a.m. Sunday.

Members of the FEMA Search and Rescue team from South Florida and New York provide medical care to an American woman, a survivor of Tuesday's earthquake, at the remains of Caribbean Supermarket in Port-au-Prince January 17, 2010. [Agencies]

Later, US teams with search dogs in the lead found and rescued a 16-year-old Dominican girl trapped for five days in a small, three-story hotel that crumbled in downtown Port-au-Prince.

More than 1,700 rescue workers had saved more than 70 lives since the quake, a U.N. spokeswoman said in Geneva.

"There are still people living" in collapsed buildings, Elisabeth Byears told The Associated Press. "Hope continues."

In such conditions, she said, people might survive until Monday.