The downpour a day ahead of the one-month anniversary of the quake served as a warning of the coming rainy season and the need to provide adequate shelter for an estimated 1.2 million still sleeping in the streets.

The rain started before dawn in a city jammed with the encampments of homeless people, many left with only the barest coverings against the elements since the January 12 quake that killed 217,000.

At the huge camp in the Champ de Mars square in the city center, where shelters have been thrown up and conditions are fast becoming a health concern, people spoke of scrambling for cover.

"I tried to take cover in a corner, under a tarpaulin," said Demosthene Wisler, 23. "Everything's wet. The clothes are wet. There's no roof."

He said he joined an early morning protest to demand tents, adding Haitian officials had yet to offer any.

Haitian authorities have warned the rainy season is now the greatest looming threat facing the impoverished Caribbean country in the wake of the 7.0-magnitude quake.

An estimated 50,000 families, or about 272,000 people, have received emergency materials to build their own shelters, the UN office that coordinates humanitarian affairs said.

Ex-US president Bill Clinton, the United Nations special envoy for Haiti, said during a visit -- more than three weeks after the quake -- that thousands more tents were on the way.

Amid the desperation, a US Coast Guard cutter took 78 Haitians picked up on an overloaded sailboat off the Bahamas back to their country, officials said.

The Coast Guard said there were no indications that more Haitians than usual were leaving the country by sea, but said it was on the lookout for that possibility and had stepped up patrols in the Caribbean.

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said Thursday she would propose "the launch of work on an EU military mission to provide shelter in Haiti ahead of the rainy season which starts in March."

But comments from Ashton's spokesman Lutz Guellner appeared to cast serious doubt on that goal. He said it will take up to 15 working days just to launch the military mission.

Meanwhile, prosecutors Thursday considered a request to release 10 Americans charged with kidnapping for attempting to take a busload of children out of the country, the judge said.

Judge Bernard Saint-Vil told AFP he had sent the defense team's request for provisional release to the prosecutor after more than two days of hearings, including testimony from the Americans and parents of the children.

He said he did not make a recommendation to the prosecutor, though Saint-Vil has final say in the case.

"I have communicated all aspects of the dossier to the Port-au-Prince prosecutor, including the request for release by the Americans' lawyers, for his conclusions," said Saint-Vil.

Asked whether he was in favor of releasing the Americans, he said it was too soon for him to comment. The judge interviewed all 10 of the Americans together on Wednesday as well as parents of the children.

The prosecutor has up to five days to consider the request for release, but a decision could come as early as Thursday, lawyers in the case said.

The 10 Americans from the New Life Children's Refuge were caught trying to take a busload of children they said they thought were orphans across the border into the Dominican Republican.

After it emerged the children had parents, the Americans' lawyers have sought to portray the Baptists as acting selflessly to help during Haiti's catastrophe.

Some of the parents have told the judge in the case they willingly gave up their children because they were unable to care for them following the devastation wrought by the quake.

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