HAITI: HUMANITARIAN AID ARRIVES IN HAITI AS FRENCH AND U.S. TROOPS CONTINUE PATROLS.
Record ID:
648232
HAITI: HUMANITARIAN AID ARRIVES IN HAITI AS FRENCH AND U.S. TROOPS CONTINUE PATROLS.
- Title: HAITI: HUMANITARIAN AID ARRIVES IN HAITI AS FRENCH AND U.S. TROOPS CONTINUE PATROLS.
- Date: 4th March 2004
- Summary: (W6) PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI (MARCH 3, 2004) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. GV/MV: U.S. TROOPS AT AIRPORT, UNLOADING EQUIPMENT (3 SHOTS) 0.20 2. GV: UNICEF PLANE ARRIVING 0.26 3. MV/GV/CU: UNICEF WORKERS UNLOADING AID (8 SHOTS) 0.58 4. (SOUNDBITE) (English) UNICEF REPRESENTATIVE FRANCOISE GRULOOS ACKERMAN, SAYING: "The most urgent, I think, is that we can have access to the population, so we need humanitarian space to provide support to these people in the entire country." 1.12 5. GV/MV: PASSENGERS GETTING ON CURACAO AIRPLANE MAKING IT THE FIRST COMMERCIAL DEPARTURE (4 SHOTS) 1.33 6. MV: HAITIAN RESIDENT LOOKING THROUGH GATE AT PALACE 1.38 7. GV/MV: U.S. TANKS GUARDING PALACE; HAITIANS LOOKING THROUGH GATE AT PALACE; U.S. TANKS ON LAWN AT PALACE (3 SHOTS) 1.49 8. CU/MV: REBELS IN STREETS (4 SHOTS) 2.07 9. VARIOUS: FRENCH TROOPS PATROLLING STREETS (9 SHOTS) 2.45 10. GV/LV: U.S. TROOPS ARRIVING TO PROTECT PRIME MINISTER YVON NEPTUNE (4 SHOTS) 3.04 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 19th March 2004 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI
- Country: Haiti
- Reuters ID: LVAGV18DWO1M3HT8STOLVWMCFBX
- Story Text: International humanitarian aid arrives in Haiti as
U.S. and French troops patrol the city.
The first planeload of emergency food and medicine
arrived in Haiti on Wednesday (March 3), three days after
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled into exile and U.S.
Marines landed to restore calm after a month-long revolt.
While U.S. troops stood guard, a DC-8 carrying 30
tonnes of medicines, water and sanitation equipment sent by
the U.N. children's fund, UNICEF, arrived in the decrepit
capital. Workers were unloading cargo that included
obstetric and infant supplies for 30,000 women and
children, the group said.
"The most urgent, I think, is that we can have access
to the population, so we need humanitarian space to provide
support to these people in the entire country," said UNICEF
worker Francoise Gruloos Ackerman.
As aid agencies warned that already dire humanitarian
needs in the poorest country of the Americas now verged on
a crisis, missionaries and aid workers who had fled to
escape fighting prepared to ramp up relief efforts.
Warehouses that stored emergency food for the U.N.'s
World Food Programme before the rebels took over a swath of
Haiti's north were looted in the mayhem as ill-equipped
police were driven out by armed gangs, demobilized soldiers
and former militia leaders.
That food would have fed hundreds of thousands in a
country where a third of the 8 million people suffer from
chronic malnutrition and incomes average just a dollar a day.
The first aid deliveries were unlikely to be widely
distributed in the provinces.
Also at the airport, passengers boarded a Dutch
commercial flight bound for Curacao. It was the first
commercial airline departure since the airport partially
reopened on Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile, foreign forces guarded the National Palace
and streets of Port-au-Prince.
U.S. Marines also took up position outside of Haiti's
Presidential Palace one day after a massive demonstration
by rebel supporters.
Yet armed rebels patrolled the streets and remained in
control of what used to be the military headquarters that
was turned into a women's Ministry and museum.
More than 1,000 U.S. troops were on the ground in Haiti
as part of a multinational force approved by the United
Nations on Sunday after Aristide was driven from power.
French and Canadian troops were also in Haiti to join a
force expected to grow to about 5,000.
The American troops also reinforced security around
Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, after rebels tried to arrest
him. The presence of U.S. forces prevented self-styled
rebel leader Guy Philippe's men from seizing Neptune, an
Aristide appointee, on Tuesday (March 2).
Torn by 32 coups in the past two centuries,
long-simmering political tensions in Haiti erupted into
armed revolt on February 5 when an armed gang took over the
northwestern city of Gonaives and was later joined by
ex-soldiers and paramilitaries. President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide went into exile in the Central African Republic.
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