UN agencies and the Red Cross said field hospitals and food distribution had multiplied in and around the capital Port-au-Prince, where the magnitude 7.0 quake wrought huge destruction, leaving tens of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands homeless and countless injured.

But the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned in a statement that "incidents of violence and looting are on the rise as the desperation grows" in Port-au-Prince.

"Access to shelter, sanitation, water, food and medical care remains extremely limited," said Riccardo Conti, the ICRC's head of delegation in Haiti, even if the international presence was "starting to be felt."

Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), admitted the population was on edge but said this was a measure of the scale of the January 12 disaster.

"We are accelerating the pace, we are fanning out on the ground, but the needs are enormous, enormous," she told AFP.

The OCHA said hospitals on the Dominican Republic's border with Haiti were "overwhelmed" with quake victims, who had fled in recent days to seek treatment while international relief workers struggled with transport bottlenecks and the lack of local resources.

The UN-led aid effort was broadening to thousands more people in severely battered outlying communities in the south of Haiti.

"The overall aim is to cover the needs for 200,000 families (one million people) within the next few weeks," OCHA said in its daily situation report.

About 105,000 one-week food rations have been distributed since the emergency relief operation began last week, with 95,000 more due to be handed out on Monday by aid workers and UN peacekeeping troops, the UN World Food Programme said.

"By the end of today we are expecting to have distributed more than 200,000 rations in and around Port-au-Prince," WFP spokeswoman Emilia Casella told AFP, as new supply routes were opened through the Dominican Republic.

The OCHA and the Red Cross said more field hospitals were in operation, carrying out delayed emergency surgery on victims, while two mobile health units and water specialists fanned out in the quake zone.

The German Red Cross announced it would send a mobile hospital with two operating rooms, 120 beds and able to treat 700 patients. A hundred or so medical staff and technicians will accompany the mission leaving from Berlin.

Three other emergency field hospitals were running with four more in the pipeline said Byrs, backing up the five local hospitals that withstood the tremor.

Relief workers were expanding to battered towns west and southwest of Port-au-Prince, including Gressier, Petit Goave, where some 14,500 people live, and Leogane, near the quake epicentre, with a population of 11,510.

UN teams have reported that 80 to 90 percent of buildings in Leogane were destroyed.

The fuel situation in Haiti "is becoming more and more critical," OCHA said, warning that a shortage could have a serious impact on relief.

"The national telecommunications system has been partly restored, but without access to fuel the mobile network will be cut off within days, which will have serious implications for the humanitarian operation," OCHA added.

Some 10,000 gallons (40,000 litres) of fuel are to be ferried in by truck daily on congested roads from the Dominican Republic.

Digicel, the top cell-phone operator in Haiti -- where less than one percent of people own a landlines -- said it had restored 70 percent of coverage in the capital and that coverage outside Port-au-Prince was back to normal.

The International Organisation for Migration said it was planning with Haitian authorities to resettle 100,000 people, possibly in an area about 13 kilometres (eight miles) northeast of Port-au-Prince.

"Like the tsunami, the response will be on a huge scale and last for months," said Byrs, referring to the December 2005 disaster in Asia.

earlier related report
UN envoy Bill Clinton in Haiti, meets survivors in hospital
Port-Au-Prince (AFP) Jan 18, 2010 - UN special envoy Bill Clinton on Monday defended the pace of incoming foreign aid and praised doctors working in shocking conditions as he toured the devastation in Haiti's capital.

"I'll be surprised and disappointed if 48 hours from now we're not feeding and bringing fresh water to dramatically larger amounts of people," Clinton told reporters here.

The former US president was whisked to the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince and given a first-hand look at the ruined city and the misery facing survivors and those treating them after last week's cataclysmic quake.

"They have done an amazing job given the adversity they have faced," Clinton told AFP of the medical personnel as he walked through the crowded hospital largely unrecognized by most of the ailing Haitians around him.

Clinton, somber-looking as he bent down and comforted a wounded woman lying on the floor, said he was "shocked" by what the doctors have been able to do without even rudimentary medical supplies such as alcohol.

"I think the people have been heroic," said Clinton, who was accompanied by his daughter Chelsea as they walked down hospital hallways crowded with the injured and the dying.

With the morgue overflowing, quake survivors had laid hundreds of corpses outside the hospital last week, and while those bodies have since been moved, the stench of death still filled the air in and around the hospital.

Despite the dire conditions, Clinton stressed that aid was flowing at an acceptable pace.

"No, I don't think they were slow coming in," said Clinton.

"The infrastructure broke down (as a result of the earthquake), and that's what we're building up."

But simmering unrest has been stoked by the agonizing delays in supplies reaching the hundreds of thousands of people who have been without a steady source of food or water since the quake struck.

Haiti's collapsed government, ruined port and roads, an overcrowded airport and a mounting threat of lawlessness in Port-au-Prince all have conspired to snarl relief efforts.

The international Red Cross warned Monday that access to clean water, food, shelter and medical care "remains extremely limited."

On the grounds of the hospital, desperate Haitians seeking shelter under plastic sheeting told of their misery and the immediate need for outside help.

Nadia Meranvivne sat outside awaiting news of her 18-month-old son whose arm and leg were broken in the earthquake.

"We hope that Mr Clinton will help us save our lives and the lives of our children," she wept.

"He (Clinton) can help us, because this country doesn't have anything."

Before leaving, Clinton was supposed to meet with President Rene Preval and other Haitian leaders at the Port-au-Prince airport to discuss ways to more effectively coordinate the distribution of aid.

"We are trying to be very targeted with what we're bringing in," he told AFP at the hospital, referring to the water, food, medical supplies, and other supplies such as solar flashlights, portable radios and generators being provided by The Clinton Foundation.

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