Haiti: bodies buried in mass graves
Updated on 17 January 2010
On the hillsides around Port-au-Prince, thousands of bodies are being dumped in mass graves, memorials to the unknown dead.
Warning: the video package contains distressing images
They have buried 25,000 bodies so far. It is estimated 100,000-200,000 people have now died and some are still dying.
Aid is beginning to come in by the planeload but distrbution is still very dificult.
As I write, a massive jumbo cargo plane is landing on the runway.
There are blackhawk helicopters in the sky above me.
American troops are on the ground but as yet in small numbers and there is a political row brewing.
Some aid agencies have complained their flights were redirected to enable Hillary Clinton to land.
A spokeswoman for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said: "Despite guarantees, given by the United Nations and the US Defense Department, an MSF cargo plane carrying an inflatable surgical hospital was blocked from landing in Port-au-Prince on Saturday, and was re-routed to Samana, in Dominican Republic.
"All material from the cargo is now being sent by truck from Samana, but this has added a 24-hour delay for the arrival of the hospital."
Being Sunday, I have been to the wreckage of the cathedral here in Port-au-Prince. The face of Christ survives in the shattered rose window and almost the only thing intact otherwise is a white bone crucifix outside.
I have talked to beggars who were gathered outside the cathedral. I have talked to others who saw it come down.
We have also been to the burial pit where thousands of bodies are being bundled out of the city in dumper trucks.
They cascade out of the trucks, somehow neutered and inanimate until you see the body of a baby thrown clear and there he lies in the grass, a symbol of humanity's abject loss.
