A specially-fitted military C-130 plane will Monday evening begin spewing the pesticide Naled to kill mosquitoes and flies in the near-deserted city which was catastrophically flooded by Hurricane Katrina two weeks ago.

"We will begin spraying for mosquitoes and flies in the New Orleans area," Admiral Craig Vanderwagen, head of the US Public Health Service, said in Baton Rouge, Louisiana's capital, which lies 130 kilometers (70 miles) northwest of New Orleans.

"These insects do carry disease - West Nile and other diseases - and we think that their control and abatement is a critical public health function that needs to be addressed and we will begin dealing with that tomorrow."

The bombardment, to be carried out by the Air National Guard, would "address the fact that with all the standing water we are going to have a problem with flying bearers of disease" unless quick action is taken, Vanderwagen said.

Federal and state health agencies called for the insect spraying amid fears that diseases including malaria, West Nile and other mosquito-born illnesses could unleash a new plague on Katrina survivors in the region.

However Vanderwagen said that concerns that Asia's killer tsunami last year would be followed by a wave of mosquito- and water-born diseases had proved to be unfounded, although epidemiologists were unclear why that was the case.

Large swathes of New Orleans remain under a fetid and reeking layer of water, up to three meters (five feet) deep in some places, filled with tons of human waste and corpses.

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