UN troops seek to locate wreckage of banks
By DPA, IANSTuesday, January 19, 2010
Port-au-PRINCE - UN troops in the Haitian capital, whose presence broadened Tuesday a week after the earthquake, had been asked to recover cash from collapsed bank wreckage, a Haitian government official said.
The official, a counselor to Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, told reporters near the presidential palace that the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) had a specific mission to locate cash from the crushed banks in Port-au-Prince.
One week after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake killed an estimated 200,000 people, the city is still struggling to restore food and water supplies, communications, electricity and trade. Looting in the crushed buildings has escalated.
The counselor said there was a plan to open banks soon, but there was no immediate time frame and a suitable location would have to found.
Earlier Tuesday, the UN Security Council authorized the deployment of additional 3,500 military and police units to Haiti to bolster the 9,000 UN soldiers and police currently there.
UN peacekeepers suffered their worst losses ever, with 46 killed in the earthquake and many more still unaccounted for.
