The previous evening, armed men had created panic in certain areas, and two policement were shot and wounded in La Saline. On 30 September - the thirteen anniversary of the military coup against the first Aristide government - armed individuals fired their weapons in many districts and others attacked cars and smashed their windscreens.

The former Lavalas Family deputy, Gilbert Angerville, denied that his party was responsible for the violence. He accused the government and the police of "paying bandits to create a violent situation that could be blamed on Lavalas." In Cap-Haïtien, a pro-Lavalas Family march was also disrupted by violence, and police made arrests. (Alterpresse)

30 September - Scores of armed rebels approached Gonaïves and some sneaked into the city despite opposition from UN peacekeepers, ratcheting up more tension in the city of a quarter million devastated by floods more than a week ago. Barefooted survivors still walk through sewage and mud. Gangsters are looting food aid. Widespread damage to crops and livestock has experts fearing a famine.

Radio Vision 2000 reported Wednesday that about 150 heavily armed rebels in trucks tried to enter the city in northwest Haiti but turned around when ordered to by UN peacekeepers guarding the entrance, which has been a flashpoint for looting. But an AP reporter encountered about 20 fatigue-clad rebels inside the city as darkness fell. They were in front of the main international food aid warehouse belonging to CARE and confronting UN troops. The only visible weapons the rebels had were a rifle, a pistol and a knife.

The rebels were telling the peacekeepers they had come to provide security and patrol the city. The peacekeepers, who have complained about lack of help from Haiti's demoralised police force, said they would welcome the help but that the rebels would have to give up their guns. The confrontation occurred soon after people looted a food warehouse, according to Haitian radio reports. CARE, an international humanitarian organization, said it was not its warehouse, as some had reported. Anne Poulsen of the UN World Food Program, which is providing most food in Gonaïves, said it was believed to be a government warehouse. Agriculture Minister Phillipe Mathieu told reporters Tuesday that "We believe the lootings are planned by gangs." At the warehouse, one peacekeeper remonstrated the rebels: "We were sent here (to Haiti) because you are not protecting people."

It was not known late Wednesday how the confrontation at the CARE warehouse ended. The reporter had to leave because the city is dangerous at night - roamed by armed street gangs whom police say are breaking into people's homes. One makeshift clinic has reported treating at least 30 people for gunshot wounds sustained in food fights. (AP)

28 September - Street gangs are holding up aid convoys and provoking rioting at distribution sites, subjecting tens of thousands of weary storm survivors to life-threatening delays in getting food and water. The failure of Haiti's US-backed government to disarm the gangs, including the Cannibal Army that started the uprising that ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has created a climate of insecurity that jeopardizes lives in the calamity visited on Gonaïves 10 days ago by Tropical Storm Jeanne, which killed more than 1,500 Haitians. "Things are very bad here. People are insecure, and we have to fight for everything," said Rony Coq, 30, from the gang called the Bottle Army because its members fling bottles at enemies. Coq's gang operates in Cassolet, a maze of slum homes mired in several feet of mud Tuesday. (AP)

27 September - The estimated toll from the floods triggered by Tropical Storm Jeanne climbed to about 2,400 after a parish priest reported "a total disaster" in small towns in Poteau, a region outside Gonaïves. In Gonaïves, young men grabbed food from an aid convoy and others robbed women for bags of rice. Aid workers, backed by armed UN peacekeeping forces, increased the number of distribution points for emergency supplies to four but still faced tense crowds of destitute people clamoring for help.

Angry men complained about a policy of handing out food only to women, who traditionally care for the feeding of their households, and many women despaired of getting clean water for drinking and cooking, resorting to muddy wells. "We don't know if the water is good, but we have to use it. If we don't cook anything my children are going to die," said Jacqueline Orassin, a 49-year-old with six children.

Toussaint Chery, who as parish priest is Poteau's top authority, said about 1,000 people had died in 18 rural communities in his region. At least 750 of those deaths had not been previously reported, taking the nationwide toll from Jeanne to about 2,400. "I personally went to several of those communities. It's a total disaster," Chery said. "There are places that have been completely washed out."

Carl Murat Cantave, a government official in Gonaïves, also said the official toll would rise. "Given the number of missing, when we declare the final death toll in the coming days, it will be at least 2,337 just for the Gonaïves region," he said.

Relief agencies were working to set up more food distribution centers as soon as they could establish secure sites, said Rick Perera, a spokesman for relief agency CARE. At one distribution centre on Monday, several men said the policy of hand-outs to women was unfair and were determined to get supplies themselves. At least four women said they were robbed after waiting for hours for food. Martha Casseus, 16, wept as she described how two men took a bag of rice and two jugs of cooking oil. "I waited all that time and now I am going home empty-handed. I don't know what I am going to eat," she said. "My mother is sick. She has not eaten for days. What am I going to tell my mother?"

Outside Gonaïves, a group of young men attacked a convoy of trucks taking supplies to Poteau, swarming onto a food truck guarded by U.N. troops. They fled with jugs of oil and bags of rice when the convoy stopped and troops moved in. (Reuters)

27 September - The United Nations rushed hundred and fifty more peacekeepers to storm-ravaged Gonaïves to stem looting, while hundreds of weary Haitians lined up for food before daybreak Monday after spending a miserable night in the rain from Tropical Storm Jeanne. The Brazilian general in charge of the UN force criticised the slow pace of relief that is compounding the suffering of traumatised survivors. At least 1,500 were killed and some 200,000 are homeless in Gonaïves. Aid workers say street gangs that long have held sway in the city are mobbing relief workers and stealing aid. About 100 Uruguayan soldiers and 50 Argentine troops arrived Sunday to reinforce about 600 UN peacekeepers in Gonaïves. They remained on the outskirts Monday, guarding the road. (AP)

27 September - Abel Nazaire of the civil defense agency reported that more bodies were recovered from debris in Gonaïves on Sunday, raising the number of confirmed dead to 1,330, with 1,056 missing and 2,601 injured. Nazaire acknowledged that many of the missing could be presumed dead - washed out to sea or killed in collapsed homes in areas that were still inaccessible a week after the storm's passing. He said the road north from Gonaïves to Cap-Haïtien remained impassable because of mudslides, keeping officials from reaching possibly thousands of victims. About 300,000 people are homeless because of the storm, about 200,000 of them in Gonaïves, he said. Prime Minister Latortue said the government was drawing up plans to evacuate some of the homeless to a tent camp. Some victims, fearing the spread of disease, said they would abandon the city, Haiti's third largest, with 250,000 residents.

The director of the World Food Programme's Haiti operation, Guy Gavreau, said aid groups had been able to get food to only about 25,000 people last week - one-tenth of Gonaïves' population. The floods from Jeanne destroyed all of the rice and fruit harvest in the Artibonite region, Haiti's breadbasket, "so now the country can't even feed itself without outside help," Gavreau said. Planeloads of aid have arrived in Port-au-Prince, the capital, but getting it to Gonaïves is a nine-hour nightmare drive, with the final leg of the route covered by a four-foot-deep lake of mud littered with mired aid trucks. Sunday dawned sunny and bright, a relief after thunderstorms Saturday drenched those living on sidewalks and on rooftops of flooded homes. (AP)

26 September - Britain has dispatched two aircraft with aid and supplies for the people of Haiti which has been devastated by Hurricane Jeanne. One plane took off early Sunday and a second will depart later with equipment for the Caribbean country, said a spokesman for the Department for International Development which is funding the effort, worth up to £450,000. The aircraft are carrying tents which will house 3,500 people, two sports utility vehicles, radio units and power generators. (Reuters)

24 September - Gunmen raided homes and stole food from Haitians outside aid distribution centers as UN troops struggled on Friday to maintain order in the chaos left by floods in which 2,000 people may have died. A spokesman for a Brazilian-led UN force said 140 Uruguayan soldiers were sent to guard food convoys after they also came under attack near the city of Gonaïves, which has been devastated by Tropical Storm Jeanne. The spokesman, Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, said armed gangs had tried to seize food directly from the distribution centers set up in Gonaïves by aid agencies, and had forcibly grabbed food from residents as they left the centers.

"The gangs are still in Gonaïves, it is a fact," Kongo-Doudou said. "We are trying to find the best way to cope with the situation." He knew of no injuries and did not know the identity of the attackers, but residents of the port city of 200,000, many of whom have had little if any food since Sunday, blamed gangs from a neighboring community.

The secretary general of the Haitian Red Cross, Berthony Marlet, said additional security was badly needed. He had heard children crying for help as gunmen entered their homes to rob them of newly distributed food. "Gunmen have attacked residents who just got assistance and now they are attacking humanitarian convoys. We definitely need more security on the ground," Marlet said.

Kongo-Doudou said UN agencies had delivered about 120 tonnes of food since Gonaïves and other areas in the north and northwest of the poorest country in the Americas were buried under a wall of water and an avalanche of mud last weekend. (Reuters)

23 September - Gonaïves, the port city of some 200,000, overwhelmingly suffered the brunt of Jeanne's fury, but other towns reported significant numbers missing. In Port-de-Paix and neighboring Chansolme, 30 miles north of Gonaïves, 400 missing were reported missing, and the town of Gros Morne, 10 miles north of Gonaïves, also reported losses, according to Alix Baptiste, secretary of state for Haitians Living Abroad.

A UN peacekeeping force official said that also hit hard were the villages of Passereine, Poteaux and Mapou, all within 18 miles of Gonaïves and nestled in the mountains that virtually ring the city. Three rivers that come down the mountains - largely deforested to make charcoal and therefore highly prone to flash floods and mudslides - all but point their streams at Gonaïves and join to form the La Quinte River, which flows into the Caribbean less than two miles south of the port.

In addition to the dead and missing, some 30,000 people were left homeless by Jeanne's floodwaters and mudslides, Baptiste noted. (Miami Herald)

23 September - Haiti has begun burying hundreds of flood victims in mass graves while emergency food has been distributed to some of the thousands of people made homeless by Tropical Storm Jeanne. The death toll rose to 1,008 in the Artibonite region around the northern coastal city of Gonaïves and 72 in Haiti's Northwest province, said Dr. Carl Murat Cantave, a government official. Another 1,000 people were missing and the final death count was likely to hit 2,000, he said on Wednesday.

Government workers and UN peacekeepers were burying the dead in mass graves to prevent the spread of disease. Truckloads of bodies in plastic bags were delivered for burial at the Bois Marchand cemetery near Gonaïves and police were called in to calm neighbours who angrily protested the mass burials, Cantave said.

The UN's World Food Program 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. "It is a huge disaster. The water has just washed away everything," he said.

Police tried to keep order as desperately hungry people swarmed the food distribution sites. One policeman was hit by a rock and injured while trying to hold back the crowd. (Reuters)

22 Septembre - Bodies lay in growing piles outside morgues as UN peacekeepers planned the first major distribution of food and water in Gonaïves where hungry crowds have mobbed truckloads of aid. The death toll from deluges unleashed by Tropical Storm Jeanne climbed to the more than 700, Haitian officials said, with more than 600 of them in Gonaïves alone. More than 1,000 others were declared missing.

Carcasses of pigs, goats and dogs still floated in muddy waters slowly receding from the streets. Not a house escaped damage. The homeless sloshed through the streets carrying belongings on their heads, while people with houses that still had roofs tried to dry scavenged clothes. Flies buzzed around bloated corpses piled high at the city's three morgues. The electricity was off, and the stench of death hung over the city.

Relatives waited outside a morgue set up in the flood-damaged General Hospital all day to identify and bury victims. But vehicles to carry bodies to the cemetery never arrived. Most bodies remained unidentified. Red Cross volunteers put more than 100 bodies into body bags, leaving them in a pile outside the morgue. "We're going to start burying people in mass graves," said Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, a UN spokesman. Waterlines up to 10 feet high on Gonaïves' buildings marked the worst of the storm that sent torrents of water and mudslides down denuded hills, destroying homes and crops.

Dieufort Deslorges, spokesman for Haiti's civil protection agency, said he expected the death toll to rise as reports come in from outlying villages and rescuers dig through mudslides and rubble. "Certainly there are more than 700 dead, certainly there are dozens more dead," Deslorges told the AP. "It appears many were swept away to the sea, there are bodies still buried in mud and rubble, or floating in water, and that's not to mention the hundreds who are missing and the places we have not yet been able to reach." Some 1,056 people were missing, almost all from Gonaïves, Deslorges said. Deslorges said some 250,000 people were homeless across the country, and the storm destroyed at least 4,000 homes and damaged unknown thousands more.

Eight helicopters from a Brazilian-led UN peacekeeping force shuttled shipments of water, food and supplies to Gonaïves on Tuesday after Chilean troops found the road from the north impassable, said Argentine Lt. Col. Gaston Irigoyen, a spokesman. Several nations were sending aid, including US$1.8 million from the European Union, and US$1 million and rescue supplies from Venezuela. The US Embassy announced US$60,000 in immediate relief aid Monday, drawing criticism from legislator Kendrick Meek, who called it "a drop in the bucket."

A police officer in Gonaïves said aid vehicles were having trouble getting into the city because people were mobbing them. One truck made it to the central City Hall, only to be attacked by people who squeezed inside and threw packets of water into the scrambling crowd. (AP)

Another disaster in Haiti: we name the guilty parties - Haiti Support Group press release, 21 September 2004

21 September - On Monday and Tuesday, convoys carrying food and medicine were sent towards Gonaïves and other locations severely hit by the floods. Meanwhile, the total of victims mounts by the hour. By midday Tuesday, the Minustah spokesperson was saying that there were 600 bodies at 'La Providence' hospital in Gonaïves. To this total should be added a further 109 bodies reported found in the North and North-West departments. The number of deaths is sure to rise as news comes in from cut-off areas. Bodies continue to arrive by the dozen and there is no room left in the morgue, according to an employee there. (HPN)

21 September - At least 556 people died after floodwaters raged through Haiti in the wake of tropical storm Jeanne, a UN spokesman says. Aid agencies counted some 500 bodies in the northern coastal city of Gonaïves, the spokesman for the UN peacekeeping mission, Toussiant Kong-Doudou, said. Another 56 people died in the town of Port-de-Paix, officials said. There is particular concern about the island of La Tortue, which is said to be barely visible under the water.

Peacekeepers from the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (Minustah) warned that the death toll could would rise further. "The water is high. As it goes down, we expect to find more bodies," Mr Kongo-Doudou said.

Interim Prime Minister Gérard Latortue called for international help, describing the flooded area as "a vast sea". Latortue said 80,000 people were without food and water in Gonaïves, the biggest city in the area.

People were left huddled on rooftops, while roads around the city were transformed into rivers. Many others were reported missing and injured in the country, prone to floods due to massive deforestation. Hospital workers there say medical supplies are also urgently needed.

UN peacekeepers are helping the relief effort, as are international aid agencies. The UN World Food Programme said its first convoy of 12 trucks carrying emergency food aid was heading towards Gonaïves. (BBC)

20 September - 500 people have lost their lives in Gonaïves alone, according to the latest figures given by the local civil protection office in the city. 40 people have been found dead in Port-de-Paix, 18 in Chansolme, 14 in Gros-Morne, nine in Pilate, eight in Ennery, one in Plaisance and one in the south. Over 160,000 thousand others are suffering from the effects of the flash-floods. (AHP)

20 September - Floods resulting from heavy rain from hurricane Jeane have killed more than 200 people in northern Haiti. According to Interior Minister, Hérard Abraham, 75 bodies have been found in various parts of the north. The UN Haiti Stabilisation Mission in the city of Gonaïves reports 54 bodies found and a further 150 people missing. Local correspondents report that more than 40 deaths have been recorded in the north-west, mostly in Port-de-Paix. (Alterpresse)

19 September - Two days of steady rain sent torrents down the mountains in the Artibonite region, causing the Laquinte River to burst its banks, civil defense officials said. Homes were washed away, cars were caught in the rising water and the telephone service was cut off, making it difficult to communicate with emergency officials in the region. An estimated 160,000 people have been effected. (Alterpresse, Reuters)