PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The trail of orphaned, homeless and hungry Haitians left by Hurricane Jeanne huddled under tarps and scrambled for food Thursday as relief workers warned of epidemics from floodwaters made fetid by the bodies of human and animal victims.

“We have critical concerns over epidemics, because there are bodies still in the flooded streets and people are drinking the dirty water,” said Francoise Gruloos, Haiti’s director for the U.N. Children’s Fund.

At least 1,113 people were confirmed dead and 1,251 remained missing, mostly in the northern port city of Gonaives, while more than 900 were treated for injuries and 300,000 were homeless, said Dieufort Deslorges, a spokesman for the government’s new hurricane relief committee.

About 30,000 children under the age of 5 also have been affected, some of them orphaned when Jeanne killed their parents and many of their siblings, Gruloos added. UNICEF will dispatch 30 staff members to find orphans and provide them with support and counseling, she added.

Desperate Gonaives residents seeking treatment for wounds and diseases were turning up as far away as the clinic run by Harvard Dr. Paul Farmer in the mountain town of Cange, a six-hour drive, according to officials of Project Medishare, a group affiliated with the University of Miami that runs a separate clinic in Haiti. Farmer splits his time between Cange and Cambridge, Mass.

Argentina sent two cargo aircraft with food, water and medical supplies, and the Red Cross was sending four more carrying blankets, plastic sheeting, water purification equipment and cooking utensils from Panama, Canada, France and Spain.

But the planes were landing in Port-au-Prince, a six- to eight-hour drive from Gonaives on roads cut at several places by floodwaters and mudslides unleashed by Jeanne when it struck Haiti on Saturday.

Four small emergency field hospitals in Gonaives were reporting shortages of medicines and other supplies, said one official with the U.N. peacekeeping force deployed after former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced into exile by a revolt in February.

The clinics are being manned by doctors from Medicins San Frontieres and Medicins Du Monde, two French-based volunteer organizations, 14 Cuban doctors and Argentine military officers, the official added.

New mass graves were dug Thursday at a Gonaives cemetery to dispose of the stacks of bloated bodies that have accumulated in the city’s three morgues.

But relief officials said their prime concern was delivering food and potable water to about 300,000 Haitians who have had little of either in the past five days.

The U.N. World Food Program delivered 71-1/2 tons of food to Gonaives, and peacekeeping officials said they had reports that some families are managing to cook rice on their rooftops while staying out of the floodwaters below.

Scuffles broke out among Haitians as relief workers tried to distribute emergency supplies in Gonaives, and police reported overnight shootings by property owners trying to fend off looters.

“In terms of the security situation, it has not been controlled yet,” Fritz Fougy, deputy chief of mission at the Haitian Embassy in Washington, D.C., told The Miami Herald. “As for the distribution of food, it’s been known that people are very hungry and these things could happen.”

After days of complaints about the meager $60,000 in U.S. emergency assistance to Haiti, the Agency for International Development announced Thursday that it will provide an additional $2 million in aid to help flood victims in Haiti.

“The administration has now promised significant aid to Haiti. However, it does sadden me that the United States, as leader of the free world, took so long to come to the plate,” said Rep. Kendrick B. Meek, D-Fla.

Aristide issued a statement from exile in South Africa mourning the deaths in Haiti, which is celebrating the 200th anniversary of its independence from France.

“Condolences and courage to an entire nation that has seen much pain and suffering in this tumultuous bicentennial year,” Aristide said. “We continue to stand in solidarity with all Haitians who suffer.”

—

(c) 2004, The Miami Herald.

Visit The Miami Herald Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.herald.com/

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

AP-NY-09-23-04 2042EDT