.gif)
Haitian officials Thursday unveiled a huge operation to move hundreds of thousands of homeless outside the ruined capital, as medics worked feverishly to treat countless injured.
In a bid to move an estimated 500,000 left destitute by the January 12 quake, the Haitian government said it was seeking to relocate them out of squalid, stinking tent cities into housing outside Port-au-Prince.
"The government has made available to people free transportation. A large operation is taking place: we're in the process of relocating homeless people," said Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime.
The government was paying some 34 buses to take quake victims to the south and north of the Caribbean nation to hastily set up villages designed to hold 10,000 people each, and was working with local mayors to identify sites.
US troops were also moving to clear the main port in the devastated capital, hoping to re-open it on Friday and start a massive distribution of aid across the country. Four airports are also being used to ferry in supplies.
Nine days after the 7.0-magnitude quake, rescue teams from around the world are still combing the debris for survivors in and around Port-au-Prince, after two children were miraculously found alive on Wednesday.
But those pulled from the rubble still face a desperate fight for life.
Tens of thousands remain seriously wounded in makeshift field hospitals set up in tents on the ruins of the ravaged capital, and gangrene has already begun to eat its way through many wounds in the tropical heat.
International doctors, working in miserable conditions lacking supplies and modern equipment, have carried out countless amputations to save victims with serious crush wounds or repair internal injuries.
"We carried out 30 operations on Tuesday. In the previous six days we have cared for more than 1,000 Haitians," said French doctor Thierry Allafort Duverger at a clinic in what used to be the posh suburb of Petionville.
And life also goes on. "It's a breech birth, I can't do a breech," one aid worker wailed on BBC television outside a damaged hospital as staff rushed to help a Haitian woman in agony as she went into labor.
A 1,000-bed capacity US naval hospital ship is also off Haiti with about 800 medical personnel, and has begun taking on board the worst of the injured.
The International Organization for Migration estimated Thursday that at least half a million people are now living outdoors in improvised camps, and warned the number was climbing as people flooded in from damaged villages.
The search for survivors was still going on, buoyed after a five-year-old boy was found in the wreckage of his home Wednesday while neighbors dragged out an 11-year-old girl in another part of the city.
Mendji Bahina Sanon, 11, was taken to a French-run field hospital in the capital, clearly traumatized by her nightmarish ordeal, crying out: "Don't leave me Mama."
"As long as there is hope, rescue operations continue," Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told AFP.
Thousands of US troops have poured into Haiti, and as many as 15,000 are expected on the ground. Other nations have pledged security forces to help distribute aid, provide medical treatment and try to keep the streets secure from looters and gangs.
The World Bank said Thursday it was waiving Haiti's debt payments for the next five years due to the devastation and was studying efforts to cancel the nation's remaining debt of about 38 million dollars.
Prices are also soaring on the streets amid general shortages. Anyone who managed to stash extra food, petrol or cigarettes can now get rich, quick.
"I had several cans of gasoline at home for a factory on my property and I have been selling them little by little," said Ludovic. "It's 400 Haitian gourdes, no haggling," he said pricing a can at around 10 US dollars, twice what it fetched before.
Global efforts are also focusing on rebuilding the country, with a major donor conference set for Monday in Montreal. And the UN has unveiled a program to provide some 220,000 jobs for Haitians mainly in rubble clearing and reconstruction.
International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has called for a multilateral aid plan for Haiti on the scale of the US "Marshall Plan" that rebuilt Europe after World War II.
Countries around the world are also fast-tracking adoption processes to allow hundreds of Haitian children to be settled abroad, amid criticism that moving too fast could split up Haitian families for good.
