GONAIVES, Haiti — U.N. peacekeeping troops began handing out food and water to famished Haitians on Friday after the first shipload of aid sailed into a crumbling port on the outskirts of this flooded city, where tens of thousands are stranded in the wake of Tropical Storm Hanna.
Receding floodwaters revealed more corpses in the stinking muck, bringing fears the death toll of 163 will rise even higher. But on Friday, the focus was not on bodies, but on caring for survivors.
The ship, chartered by the U.N. World Food Program, arrived belching smoke. Guarded by armed Argentine peacekeepers, it docked at a private port away from the city because the main port was too small.
Within hours, the U.N. began distributing the high-energy biscuits and water to emergency shelters where 40,000 people were marooned and increasingly desperate. At a warehouse in the northern section of the city where floodwaters have receded, about 1,000 hungry and thirsty men and women, some cradling youngsters, pushed and shoved as Haitian civil protection authorities tried to get them in line. U.N. peacekeeping troops stood by, shotguns and assault rifles at the ready.
Anna Achelis, whose house is completely submerged, emerged from the melee holding one of her identical 3-year-old twin girls along with two bottles of water, five vitamin-enriched biscuits and a box of toiletries. She said she hoped the biscuits would stave off hunger for her five children and would try to make them last.
Some people who already had received food knocked cookies from the hands of other people, then scrambled on the floor to retrieve them.
The troops delivered aid to some 2,000 people in two shelters before operations were suspended at dusk, considering it too dangerous to work in the city after dark.
The U.S. Southern Command diverted the amphibious USS Kearsarge from Colombia to Haiti to assist in the relief effort. The ship should arrive Sunday and can rapidly move personnel and cargo by helicopter and landing craft.
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