Haiti earthquake.

[Arwen]

Haitians grasped for fading signs of life Friday in the rubble of their quake-hit capital as frustration grew over an aid bottleneck and tens of thousands of bodies rotted in the tropical heat.
World rallies round earthquake victims Residents spent a third night in the open, rattled by aftershocks The UN said search and rescue remained the top priority to locate trapped victims. Looters raided UN food stores in Port-au-Prince in a sign of the desperate situation facing its homeless, scarred and traumatized residents after a 7.0 quake the Red Cross said may have killed 50,000 people.

Volunteers clawed through piles of concrete and twisted metal looking for survivors but there was no sign of heavy lifting equipment despite the launch of a massive global aid operation.

Tons of material and badly needed supplies piled up at the international airport where flights jostled for space on the tarmac and single runway.

The United States has assumed air traffic control but flights were delayed as staff struggled to unload supplies and the major problem was getting it to where it was needed most.

Scene: Cries grow faint under Haiti rubble.

"The physical destruction is so great that physically getting from point A to point B with the supplies is not an easy task," said World Food Programme spokeswoman Emilia Casella.

"Getting physically tons and tons of equipment, of food and water is not as instant as Twitter or Skype or 24-hour satellite news."

Casella said WFP food warehouses in Port-au-Prince had been looted and it was having to restock to provide urgent aid for two million people.

UN teams urged countries to stop sending search and rescue teams into the aid logjam but called for doctors and medical personnel to treat thousands of casualties suffering crush injuries or fractures.

Every street has its row of corpses and crowds of wandering refugees.

Under the pancaked wreck of a dress store, one woman cried out faintly for help.

"They're going to die. They're going to die," spat Jean Rald Rocher as he and other volunteers clawed vainly at the concrete and twisted metal crushing her and at least one other woman showing signs of life.

He and others howled with rage as big trucks with diplomats and aid workers drove past without stopping.

At a nursing training school, some nurses had had time to huddle together before their building collapsed. One continued to cry under the rubble for a day, witnesses told AFP.

None survived.

[Arwen]

I do so hope that countries can work together to bring relief to the stricken victims of the erathquake. That politics can take a back seat in an effort to assist the people of Haiti to rebuild their lives as quickly as possible.
Please offer your prayers for the living as well as the dead.