Bodies litter New Orleans streets

NEW ORLEANS - Rotting bodies litter New Orleans streets as troops headed in to control looting and violence and thousands of desperate survivors of Hurricane Katrina plead to be evacuated from the flooded city, or even just fed.

The historic jazz city became a playground for armed looters, and sporadic gunfire hampered chaotic and widely criticised rescue efforts.

The mayhem in New Orleans, after Katrina's attack on the US Gulf Coast on Monday, resembled a refugee crisis in a Third World hot spot. There was a television report that a sniper opened fire on rescue workers as they tried to evacuate sick patients from a flooded hospital.

Bodies lay in the streets and attackers armed with axes and steel pipes stripped hospitals of medicine. Authorities said they feared thousands of people were dead but they could still only guess at the death toll. One victim was left abandoned in a wheelchair with just a sheet covering the corpse.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded for urgent help in getting evacuees to safety. "This is a desperate SOS," he said in a statement.

Nagin said between 15,000 and 20,000 survivors were still stranded outside the city's convention centre and, with supplies rapidly running out, there were no signs of the buses that had been promised to take them to decent shelter.

"We need ground transportation to get the evacuees out. We need to get them to shelter, get them to food, get them to a safer environment," Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said.

Military reinforcements descended in helicopters, and armoured personnel carriers patrolled Canal Street, which borders New Orleans' legendary French Quarter district of bars and fleshpots.

Senior Pentagon officials said the National Guard force on the storm-ravaged Gulf coast would be raised to 30,000, and 3,000 regular Army soldiers may also be sent in to tackle armed gangs that have looted stores across New Orleans.

"We will not tolerate lawlessness, or violence, or interference with the evacuation," Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said. "I'm satisfied that we have ... more than enough forces there and on the way."

The boost would bring to nearly 50,000 the number of part-time Guard and active-duty military personnel committed to the biggest domestic relief and security effort in US history after Monday's onslaught by killer Hurricane Katrina.

On the ground there was no sign of the mayhem being brought under control. Gunshots rang out and fires flared as looters broke into stores, houses, hospitals and office buildings -- some in search of food, others looking for anything of value.

Violence broke out in pockets of New Orleans among the wandering crowds grown hungry, thirsty and desperate to escape the flooded city and 32C temperatures.

"We want help," people chanted outside the convention centre."

In Washington and in the region, officials were peppered with questions about the pace of the relief operation, and some Democrats accused US President George W. Bush of acting too slowly.

Bush, who returned early to Washington on Wednesday from his Texas vacation, urged patience.

He said Katrina will represent a temporary setback for the US economy and the energy sector. But he said petrol would be hard to find in places, warned companies not to overcharge, and urged Americans to conserve.

- REUTERS