GONAIVES, Haiti (AFP) - Tension mounted in the flood-wracked Haitian city of Gonaives as residents clamored for food and drinking water while aid workers battled mud and high water to get the aid to the needy.
As international relief agencies trucked in emergency supplies across flooded roads, rescue teams continued to search the rubble, mud and high waters for more victims of the floods that killed at least 1,013, left 1,200 missing and mostly feared dead, and wounded more than 900 people.
In addition, a quarter of a million people were affected in some way or other by the September 19 floods triggered by Tropical Storm Jeanne, many losing their homes and many more left without food or clean water.
By Thursday morning, aid agencies only had managed to truck in 70 tonnes of food, with distribution complicated by the fact parts of the city were still flooded five days after the storm.
"Seventy tonnes is not enough for the huge number of victims," said Hans Havic of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
"People are in a desperate situation, they have no food, no water."
He said this fueled concern famished residents may resort to looting, and that food convoys had to take extra precautions to ensure they are not plundered.
"Despair leads to tension," he said.
Officials stress there has been no major incident to date, though local authorities said a group of men attacked four policeman protecting a relief truck and stole some of the water it carried.
"People are angry," said Sophie Paris, a spokeswoman of the peacekeeping force after assessing the situation in En Bas Point, a Gonaives slum.
UN peacekeepers accompany convoys along the 160-kilometer (100-mile) road from Port-au-Prince, whose advanced state of disrepair was further worsened by the killer floods.
The 20 helicopters of the UN force in Haiti also have been delivering supplies and relief teams, but planes were unable to land as the airport was flooded.
Emergency teams were also helping collect human remains rotting away in the sweltering heat, which were being buried in mass graves amid growing fears of epidemics in the city that lacks that lost most of its already basic sanitation systems.
Because morgues are full and in some cases difficult to reach, "people are starting to dump bodies in front of the UN compound," said Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, the spokesman for the peacekeeping force.
The stench was almost unbearable in Gonaives, where carcasses of goats and cows littered the ground and open sewers spewed into the streets.
In some neighborhoods, residents torched uncollected bodies lying in the streets. Paris said she counted 16 burned bodies in En Bas Point alone.
While relief was slow in getting to Gonaives and other northern areas devastated by the floods several countries responded to an urgent call for aid issued by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Food and clean water were top priorities, officials said.
"Given the contamination of water sources and the flooding of latrines, there are concerns about possible outbreaks of water-related diseases," the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said in a statement.
Relief officials said rebuilding Gonaives` Providence hospital would be a crucial task.
The hospital was ravaged by the floods, and witnesses said most of the 300 patients were killed or missing.
The disaster further exacerbated misery in a country that ranks among the world`s poorest and already lost 1,200 people to earlier floods in May, and was torn by civil strife earlier in the year.