"I think we're going to be there a relatively long time. I see it in months, and not weeks," said Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of the US Northern Command.

Keating said there were now 13,000 active duty military personnel and 38,000 National Guards members in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the three states hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina.

The army, meanwhile, said more than 2,800 troops from the Louisiana National Guard's 256 Brigade Combat Team are returning from Iraq this week to Fort Polk, Louisiana. They were sent home early to deal with family emergencies.

The aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman began operating in Gulf waters south of Mississippi Monday; and the helicopter carrier USS Iwo Jima was expected at pierside in New Orleans, he said.

Keating said that the USS Comfort, a hospital ship, was in Mayport, Florida taking on additional medical supplies and was expected in New Orleans on Thursday.

The USS Bataan, an amphibious assault ship that has been on the scene since shortly after the hurricane, was ready to accept patients at its hospital, the command said.

Two navy supply ships, the USNS Altair and USNS Pollux, also arrived with water and fuel for relief operations, the command said.

Over 300 military helicopters are involved in the relief efforts, he said.

Ground forces from active duty units continued to build up over the weekend with the arrival of troops from the 82nd Airborne Division from North Carolina, the 1st Cavalry Division from Texas, and Marines from Marine Expeditionary Forces in California and North Carolina.

"Coming about this time tomorrow that force will number about 7,200-7,500 soldiers and marines who will be on the ground assisting the national guard with search and rescue and humanitarian assistance," Keating said.

"Writ large, the army is going to Louisiana, and the marine corps is going to Mississippi," he said.

The active duty troops are being assigned disaster relief work, while National Guard troops are being used to help beleaguered police enforce the law in New Orleans.

Under an 1876 law called Posse Comitatus, federal military forces are barred from engaging in domestic law enforcement.

Keating, who spoke to reporters here via phone from his headquarters in Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, said those numbers were likely to swell as commanders order in additional support units.

But the force now being assembled is leveling off, he said.

Keating toured the disaster zone on Monday with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"The damage that I saw yesterday recommends to me that we will be there for a while," he said.

He said the challenges will shift as flood waters go down, from search and rescue to restoring power and protecting against fire in an area where many homes are made of wood.

In Mississippi, he said the military is providing bandwith to cell phone companies to enable them to restore service to the civilian population.

related report
'John Wayne dude' general blasts Katrina complaints as 'B.S.'
Baton Rouge, Louisiana (AFP) Sep 05 - Lieutenant General Russel Honore lived up to his 'John Wayne dude' nickname Monday, blasting complaints that red tape or poor security were snarling relief efforts as "B.S."

The fiery general, in charge of the military component of the mission, lost his rag during a press conference after President George W. Bush's visit to rescue coordinators here.

"That's B.S. It's B.S.," Honore raged.

"I can tell you that is B.S. We have got 300 helicopters and some of the finest EMS workers in the world down there.

"There is no red tape ... there are isolated incidents that people take to paint a broad brush."

Honore also lashed out at questions from journalists at the Baton Rouge emergency operations center concerning the security situation in New Orleans.

"You need to get on the streets of New Orleans, you can't sit back here and say what you hear from someone else.

"It is secure, we walk around without any issues. Why the hell are you trying to make that the issue, if you can help, get there and help," he said, saying that people were being scared away by reports of violence.

When one reporter argued that there still reports of bureaucracy and unrest stalling relief efforts in some outlying parishes of New Orleans, Honore fumed: "I don't care if it is Hancock County, Mississippi -- we are not going to have that kind of issue."

The comments that sparked Honore's verbal blast were apparently made by US Representative Bobby Jindal, who represents a New Orleans district.

"The bureaucracy needs to do more than one thing at a time. It's appropriate to save people with helicopters, but it can't be done to the exclusion of everything else," Jindal was quoted by Time magazine as saying.

Honore did not discount that Jindal may be basing his complaints on "isolated" incidents, and said he would follow up with him.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin dubbed Honore 'one John Wayne dude' in admiration for his efforts when he showed up in the city last week.

"He came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving," Nagin said in a radio interview on Thursday.

related report
Police shoot dead two gunmen in hurricane-hit New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana (AFP) Sep 05 - Police have shot dead two of six armed men who attacked contractors traveling across a bridge on their way to make repairs in hurricane-shattered New Orleans, officials said Monday.

Three others were shot and captured while the sixth person had been arrested in the violence Sunday, New Orleans Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley told reporters, warning that "looters and any violent criminals will be addressed by very serious force."

He said the armed men had fired first at a group of police officers, who had gone to investigate a reported attack on the contractors.

A US army spokesman said Sunday that the contractors for the US Army Corps of Engineers working in the flood-damaged city had come under fire from the gunmen. The contractors, he said, were not injured.

After Hurricane Katrina lashed New Orleans on August 29, law and order broke down and gun stores were looted along with other businesses.

National Guard troops have restored a semblance of order to the ruined city since arriving in force on Friday.

The US Army Corps of Engineers has been trying to repair breaches in levees which allowed floodwaters to drown this low-lying city.

Riley said that about 4,000 "law enforcement people" had been deployed in the city to maintain law and order as up to 500 New Orleans policemen had still not been accounted for after disaster struck.

The authorities believe several thousand people have died in the disaster, among the country's worst.

"We do have somewhere around 400 or 500 that are not accountable," Riley said of his fellow officers.

"Some of those officers left for various reasons. Some of those officers lost their homes and they don't know where their families are, where their spouses are and they're out looking for them. Some left because they simply could not deal with this catastrophe," he said.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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