Washington, Janaury 15: A massive international relief effort for Haiti, led by the US, got under way in earnest yesterday. But it faced horrendous logistical problems after Tuesday’s devastating earthquake that left tens of thousands of dead, with millions more injured and homeless, and shattered the infrastructure of the western hemisphere’s poorest country.
“You will not be forsaken, you will not be forgotten,” President Barack Obama told the people of Haiti. “In this, your hour of greatest need, America stands with you. The world stands with you,” he said yesterday.
But in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, where bodies were piling up on the streets as morgues turned them away, refugees asked why the help had not yet arrived. According to eyewitnesses, some Haitians had even used corpses to set up roadblocks in the city as a protest to the delay.
–Agencies