More UN Troops For Haiti

Bloomberg reports that the UN Security Council is scheduled to vote today on sending 2,000 more troops and 1,500 extra police to Haiti as forces on the ground struggle to keep order and speed delivery of food, water and medicine.

“Haiti requires a massive response from the international community,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in New York yesterday. “The people need to see that today is better than yesterday, and that the future will be better than the past.” The UN, whose Haitian offices were destroyed in the 7- magnitude quake Jan. 12, has more than 9,000 troops and officers in Haiti. At least 46 UN staffers died in the disaster, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

Aid workers face scattered street violence, fueled in part by shortages of food and medical supplies in the capital, a city of about 3 million people. The quake, which may have killed more than 100,000 people, damaged roads, the port and toppled the control tower at the country’s only international airport, hampering efforts to get relief supplies moving.