"Back up, back up. I'm not trying to be rude, but you've got to back up," a soldier shouted as a French official tried to lead a group of French nationals into the airport terminal.

"Passeport americain seulement. Passeport americain seulement," a frustrated State Department official shouted, as Haitian refugees began to crowd around an ad hoc holding area for US citizens clutching their precious blue passports.

The US troops were the first of an estimated 1,000 due to pour into the country over the course of the day.

The United States is deploying as many as 10,000 troops to Haiti over the next few days, although many will remain on an armada of naval vessels gathering offshore, led by the aircraft carrier USS Vinson, the Pentagon said.

The US detachment is the largest so far committed to the aid effort, three days after a massive earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, killing thousands and destroying all semblance of governance in this poverty-stricken country.

The 82nd Airborne troops set up base at the airport, securing the entrance to the terminal where they began filtering US passport holders out of the crowd of hundreds of frustrated would-be refugees demanding flights.

A measure of order was restored, but there were confused and sometimes angry scenes as non-American diplomats tried to extract their own nationals from the crowd to usher them to rescue planes waiting on the tarmac.

French diplomats trying to get 64 of their fellow nationals to the first of three planes due to extract them were initially turned back by US troops and State Department officials.

The misunderstandings were cleared up, however, and within a hour both French and US nationals were gathered on the tarmac in lines waiting for a place on one of the dozens of planes shuttling in and out.

"We're just setting up control points," said Sergeant Kelab Barrieau.

The Toussaint Louverture International Airport, the hub of a ballooning international relief effort, is brimming with air force transports from a dozen nations unloading humanitarian and military supplies on the tarmac.

"We're going to be branching out around the city to help the United Nations and other forces who need it provide whatever assistance is required," Barrieau said, as heavy-lift helicopters arrived to join the operation.

Troops were scheduled to continue arriving throughout the day until the contingent grows to "brigade strength" of several thousand personnel, with units arriving overnight in C-130 and C-17 cargo planes from Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

"We're prepared to stay for whatever amount of time is necessary, most likely 60 days, but if more time is needed, we will be there to help out," Barrieau told AFP.

As order was gradually restored and foreign nationals trapped by the disaster began to leave, aid workers and journalists continued to flow in the opposite direction, into the impoverished Caribbean nation.

But some confusion remained.

The Dutch ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Rita Dulci Rahman, who is also responsible for Haiti, was in the airport's carpark with a single aide and had to borrow an AFP reporter's phone to find her driver.

She said the Netherlands will fly in a plane carrying rescue equipment, as well as 63 rescue and medical workers in the course of the day.

As of Friday, 18 countries were participating in the relief operations with more than a thousand people on the ground and 114 sniffer dogs, said Nicholas Reader, spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"The word we are getting back is that they don't need any more search and rescue teams," he told AFP on the tarmac.

Instead, aid shipments will now concentrate on the humanitarian needs -- principally medical supplies and food and water -- for the survivors still living among the ruins left by a quake that left thousands dead, he said.

"We really need to focus on the living, and what we can do for them," Reader said.

earlier related report
'Risk of riots' in Haiti: Brazilian defense minister
Brasilia (AFP) Jan 15, 2010 - The delay in getting water, food and shelter to the desperate population of Haiti's capital is raising "the risk of riots," Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim warned Friday after visiting the quake-hit city.

"We are worried about security," he bluntly told reporters on arrival in Brasilia after a two-day stay in Port-au-Prince.

"As long as the people are hungry and thirsty, as long as we haven't fixed the problem of shelter, we run the risk of riots," he said.

Brazil is in command of the 9,000 UN peacekeeping force deployed to Haiti before the quake, and is using its 1,260 troops for disaster relief efforts.

It lost 17 of its citizens in the quake, according to Jobim.

They were: 14 soldiers in the peacekeeping mission; a high-profile civilian campaigner for children's rights, Zilda Arns; the deputy UN representative in Haiti, Luiz Carlos da Costa; and another, unidentified Brazilian.

Another four Brazilian soldiers were missing, though Jobim said that term was really a "euphemism," suggesting he believed they were also dead.

The Brazilian army said 25 of its soldiers were injured in the quake. The Globo news website said 16 of them arrived in Brazil on Friday for medical treatment.

One of them, Corporal Carlos Pimentel de Almeida, told a televised media conference that, when the quake struck, he thought his military post was under attack.

"I thought it was an attack... that a bomb exploded," he said.

He showed a head wound he sustained from falling debris and recounted that several of his comrades died when the building collapsed.

He added that, once recovered, he wanted to return to Haiti "because the population needs help."

Brazil has sent at least six flights full of aid for Haiti's quake survivors and its troops, including water, food, medical supplies and rescue personnel. More were due to leave Friday.

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