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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Haiti six days later

Haiti remains a place of profound need, anguish, desperation and danger, with a few glimmers of hope and slowly growing capabilities to receive and distribute the international aid now flowing in. Sporadic looting, sometimes violent, was met with force by security oficials and ordinary citizens, resulting in a number of further deaths and injuries. The tenuous security situation has led to at least one temporary evacuation of a medical facility, to protect the care-givers. Despite the long time since the earthquake, at least five people were pulled from the rubble alive this weekend, including a young girl trapped inside a supermarket who was fortunately surrounded by food, and survived on fruit snacks.

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1. People run toward a U.S. helicopter as it makes a water drop near a country club used as a forward operating base for the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010. Relief groups and officials are focused on moving aid flowing into Haiti to survivors of the powerful earthquake that hit the country on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
2. A man is rescued by members of U.S., Spanish and Taiwanese rescue teams in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, January 17, 2010. (REUTERS/Marco Dormino/MINUSTAH/Handout)
3. A woman raises her arms for products as people loot from a destroyed shop after Tuesday's earthquake in Port-au-Prince, January 16, 2010. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)
4. Looters fight for products at a business area in Port-au-Prince January 16, 2010. Four days after a massive quake killed up to 200,000 people and wrecked most of the capital Port-au-Prince, hundreds of thousands of Haitians were still desperately waiting for assistance as scavengers and looters preyed on shattered buildings in the widespread absence of authority and order. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)
5. A mob of Haitians reach out as goods are thrown from a nearby shop in the downtown business district on January 17, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
6. Looters fight for goods outside a grocery store on January 17, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, five days after a massive earthquake devastated Haiti's infrastructure and killed tens of thousands of people. (JUAN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images)
7. A Haitian police officer points a rifle at a man during a looting spree in the downtown business district on January 17, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
8. A Brazilian and Chinese search and rescue team searches through the rubble of the headquarters of the United Nation's mission in Haiti in Port au Prince January 15, 2010. (REUTERS/Logan Abassi/UN Photo/Handout)
9. U.S. rescue worker Sam Grey, of the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue, holds a monitor showing a woman, Jean Luis Sainte Heleine, 28, alive and conscious, buried under the collapsed University of Port-au-Prince, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
10. Russian rescuers carry Senvilo Ovri, 11, a survivor of the earthquake, out of the remains of a house in Port-au-Prince January 16, 2010. (REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva)
11. Haitians survey the damage to a building that collapsed onto a road in downtown Port-au-Prince January 17, 2010. (REUTERS/Hans Deryk)
12. Children walk past a crack caused by the earthquake in a street in Port-au-Prince January 16, 2010. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)
13. A man peeks through the gates from outside the International Committee of the Red Cross headquarters in Port-au-Prince, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010. (AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo)
14. People take water after breaking a pipe, on January 16, 2010 in the shantytown "Cite' Soleil" in Port-au-Prince following the 7.0-magnitude quake on January 12. (Olivier Laban Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)
15. A woman waits for medical attention for her son in Port Au Prince General Hospital on January 16th, 2010. (Globe staff photo/Bill Greene)
16. Georges Boutin of Fort Lauderdale, Florida (with hacksaw) and daughter (right) Pier Boutin of Lenox, Massachussets use a hacksaw to amputate a woman's leg in Port Au Prince General Hospital. It was the first surgery at the country's largest hospital since the earthquake. (Globe staff photo/Bill Greene)
17. A temporary camp for homeless Haitians is seen from a Canadian Forces helicopter fly-over in Port-au-Prince on Sunday Jan. 17, 2010. (AP Photo/Tyler Anderson, Pool)
18. A boy holds a candle at a camp for earthquake survivors in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
19. A boy lies injured in a makeshift hospital after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince January 17, 2010. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)
20. Haitian-American people line up as they board a U.S. C-17 Globemaster III plane to be evacuated from Port-au-Prince January 16, 2010. (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)
21. A young child's dead body lies covered on a table outside the general hospital's morgue on January 16, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
22. A Haitian mass grave receives unclaimed, unidentified bodies in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince January 16, 2010. (Olivier Laban Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)
23. In the outskirts of Port Au Prince, bodies, apparently of the victims of the earthquake, are dumped in piles just off the roadside. Photo taken January 15, 2010. (Globe staff photo/Bill Greene)
24. People walk on a debris-covered street in Port-au-Prince January 17, 2010. (REUTERS/Daniel Aguilar)
25. Men stand near a burning body left in the street in Port-au-Prince, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010. U.N. peacekeepers patrolling the capital said popular anger is rising and warned authorities and aid organizations to increase security to guard against looting after Tuesday's earthquake. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
26. Looters run during a police assault, January 17, 2010 near the Hypolite Market in Port-au-Prince. Hundreds of rioters ransacked Hyppolite market in the heart of the devastated city as survivors besieged hospitals and make-shift field clinics, some carrying the injured on their backs or on carts. (Olivier Laban Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)
27. A Haitian national policeman takes position during riots with looters in downtown Port-au-Prince January 17, 2010. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)
28. Looters steal a bag of another looter who lies dead, shot by the police on January 17, 2010 near the Hypolite Market in Port-au-Prince. (Olivier Laban Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)
29. A man with a knife and other looters fight for goods taken from a destroyed store in downtown Port-au-Prince January 17, 2010. (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)
30. A man points a gun toward a crowd in downtown Port-au-Prince January 15, 2010. The man fired warning shots into the air to prevent looters from ransacking his shop, a Reuters photographer witnessed. (REUTERS/Kena Betancur )
31. A man pulls the body of an earthquake victim from a coffin in order to steal the coffin at the cemetery in Port-au-Prince, Friday, Jan. 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
32. The ruins of a cathedral are seen in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Marco Dormino/MINUSTAH via Getty Images)
33. A man rents mobile phone chargers by the hour in downtown Port-au-Prince January 17, 2010. (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)
34. Scavengers climb across the rubble of quake-damaged buildings in downtown Port-au-Prince, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010. Haitian police scattered hundreds of stone-throwing looters. (AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo)
35. In this photo provided by the U.S. Navy, Air Force Tech Sgt. Nicholas Wentworth hangs an intravenous solution inside an MH-60S Sea Hawk prior to flying an earthquake victim to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) on Sunday Jan. 17, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy, Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Joel Carlson)
36. Haitian citizens crowd a ship in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010. (Candice Villarreal/U.S. Navy via Bloomberg)
37. Survivors of Tuesday's earthquake extend their arms as U.S. troops with the 82nd Airborne Division distribute water in Port-au-Prince, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010. The troops gave out over 9,000 bottles of water and 2,000 meals Sunday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
38. Women pray during Mass held outside the city's main Cathedral in Port-au-Prince, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010. About one hundred people celebrated Mass Sunday morning just outside the Cathedral, which was totally destroyed in Tuesday's earthquake. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)