Haiti: UN Chief Calls for More Troops as Looting Rises In Port-au-Prince
In addition to crushed limbs, doctors now treating gunshot wounds.
PORT-au-PRINCE, Haiti Jan. 18, 2010— -- An additional 3,500 United Nations police and soldiers were requested today to help keep the peace in earthquake-shattered Haiti as reports of looting have increased among the country's desperate survivors.
The request was made by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in a closed-door session with the U.N. Security Council to reinforce the 7,000 U.N. peacekeepers already in Haiti.
In addition, thousands of U.S. Marines and units of the 82nd Airborne Division were poised to help with relief operations as well as to keep order. Canada, France and Portugal are also sending in forces to provide security.
The rising concerns about keeping order are emerging as the European Union, quoting Haitian officials, said that 200,000 may have been killed in last Tuesday's quake. Haitian officials have said that at least 70,000 bodies have been buried. EU officials estimated that about 250,000 were injured and 1.5 million are homeless.
Among the dead are 24 Americans. Nearly 3,000 Americans have been evacuated from the country.
Trying to keep the donations streaming in to help Haiti, President Obama toured visited a Red Cross office in Washington, and former president Bill Clinton toured the devastated Haitian capital today. "I think we are getting there, I see it, " Clinton told reporters at a Port-au-Prince hospital he visited. "It is much better now than it was two days ago and day after tomorrow, it will be better again."
But "better" is not coming fast enough for many doctors. ABC's David Muir spoke to doctors in Port-au-Prince who said they had to scavenge for sterile saws to use in operations. One doctor told him his colleagues had to use the plastic end of a ballpoint pen as an instrument for a tracheotomy.
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