Quake survivors in Haiti have clamoured for supplies of food, water and medicine as aid began to trickle in and thousands more US troops were due to join beleaguered relief efforts.
Five days after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake flattened much of the impoverished Caribbean nation 70,000 bodies had been buried in mass graves and international aid workers were struggling to cope with the scale of the crisis.
Several hundred thousand people have been made homeless and officials fear the eventual death toll could top 200,000.
Food rations provided by the United Nations and humanitarian organizations reached Challe, a camp for 10,000 displaced people for the first time on Sunday, but quake survivors were dismayed that only small packets of dry biscuits were distributed.
"We have been waiting since Tuesday and that is all there is!" said Vanel Louis-Paul, a father of three brandishing an empty biscuit packet.
A coordinator at the camp, situated between the ravaged capital Port-au-Prince and its airport, said there was more urgent need of water and medical supplies, particularly for old people and children.
One of the UN troops providing security at the camp said the international body's World Food Program (WFP) had "a lot of food and water in a warehouse close to the airport" but there were not enough trucks to distribute it.
Military mobilized
US President Barack Obama has mobilized military reserves and UN chief Ban Ki-moon vowed after visiting the disaster zone on Sunday to accelerate aid efforts.
Another 7,500 US military personnel were expected by Monday to join 5,800 US forces already on the ground or in ships off Haiti.
A US admiral said more humanitarian aid was coming through Guantanamo, the US naval base in Cuba, every day.
"Time is still of the essence. We're getting better, but there is still a lot of misery in Haiti," Rear Admiral Ted Branch, commander of the US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson strike group, told reporters Sunday.
Some 280 emergency centers coordinated by the WFP were also due to be set up Monday to distribute aid and provide shelter for the homeless, a Haitian government source said.
Survivors were besieging hospitals and makeshift clinics, some carrying the injured on their backs or on carts, and violence flared on Sunday as police tried to stop looting in a city market.
The stench of burning bodies hung over slums clinging to a hillside as residents abandoned the search for survivors and torched the squalid ruins.
Death toll
Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, who is running the vast US military relief operation, said 200,000 might be a possible "start point" for the final death toll, but that it was too early to know.
"Clearly, this is a disaster of epic proportions, and we've got a lot of work ahead of us," he said.
After hours of painstaking digging, a team from Florida unearthed a seven-year-old girl, a man aged 34 and a 50-year-old woman in the mangled wreckage of a supermarket in Port-au-Prince.
Australian news crews put aside their day jobs to rescue an 18-month-old baby after hearing her cries from underneath the rubble as she lay trapped next to the bodies of her dead parents.
"And then, out of the ruins came this little girl, and I will never forget it," Nine Network reporter Robert Penfold told The Australian newspaper.
"She did not cry. She looked astonished, almost as if she was seeing the world for the first time."
A Danish man was pulled unscathed from the flattened UN mission, but the likelihood of finding more survivors was waning with every hour.
Residents' despair
With vital supplies of water and food still struggling to reach some of those most in need, many Haitians were despairing over how to now survive the aftermath of the quake.
"Life is really hard, we have nothing," said 40-year-old Jean Osee, camped out with his family in front of the presidential palace in a makeshift slum of 50,000 people.
Hundreds of rioters ransacked Hyppolite market in the heart of the capital. Police reinforcements descended on the market armed with shotguns and assault rifles and one rioter, a man in his 30s, was fatally shot in the head, an AFP photographer said.
In the few medical facilities that are still standing in the city, there is not only a shortage of medication, but also of staff.
"They are overwhelmed and bursting at the seams," the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
The UN has estimated that the quake affected three million people -- one third of Haiti's population -- and left 300,000 homeless. Some 40 tent cities have sprung up in Port-au-Prince, according to the Red Cross.
UN chief Ban flew back to New York on Sunday bearing the bodies of some of the 40 UN staffers killed when the UN mission in the Haitian capital collapsed.
