The UN Security Council agreed unanimously to the increase. The troops will bolster efforts by 7,000 UN peacekeepers and 2,000 police already there, to maintain security and support earthquake relief efforts.
Haitian officials are now saying the death toll from last week's earthquake will hit 200,000.
Some 70,000 bodies have now been recovered from the rubble and trucked off to mass graves. The latest casualty report from the European Commission, which cited Haitian government figures, doubled previous estimates of the dead, to approximately 200,000.
European Commission analysts estimate another 250,000 have been injured and a staggering 1.5 million are now homeless. Most of those are sleeping in the streets of the capital or trying to find transportation to get out to the countryside, where some hope food is easier to find.
For those who stay, accessing the aid that is being brought in is a huge challenge.
CTV's Tom Clark, reporting from Port-au-Prince, says the problem isn't a lack of aid, as it was in the early days of the quake aftermath -- now it's a matter of distribution.
About 100 aircraft a day, loaded with food, water and supplies, are now being allowed to land at the capital's only airport. They include huge Hercules C-130 and C-17 transport planes that are coming in around the clock, 24 hours a day.
As well, the U.S. military says it will begin using two additional airports to bring in aid in the coming days.: one in the town of Jacmel, where Canada's DART team has based its efforts; and another airfield in neighbouring Dominican Republic.
"So there's no shortage of aid arriving. The real problem is getting it out to the people," Clark told Canada AM Tuesday.
"I liken it to taking all that aid and getting it through the eye of a needle."
With the port in the capital blocked and badly damaged, distribution of supplies can only come through the city's lone airport.
Getting it out to the people from there is proving a further challenge. Most infrastructure is completely destroyed, and many roads are blocked and impassable, Clark says.
"And even if you get into the neighbourhoods, you have the problem of how do you distribute aid without causing a riot. That has already happened a few times here," he says.
The U.S. military tried to do an air drop of relief supplies from C-17 transport planes Monday, parachuting pallets of ready-to-eat meals to a secured area outside the city, rather than landing and unloading at the crowded airport.
"But that created a riot on the ground," says Clark. "Then they tried passing it out through iron gates. When they finally ran out, the mobs just broke down the gates and took the last of the stores.
"So there's a clash between the desperation, the need for help and the need for order."
United Nations relief agency officials said the security situation was largely under control and had not hampered distribution of food rations to 270,000 Haitians so far.
"The situation is tense but calm. Of course there are lootings because the population is on edge," Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the UN Office for the Coordination of humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told Reuters in Geneva.
Still, there have been reports of outbreaks of violence. In the huge Cite Soleil slum, gangsters who escaped from the city's notorious main penitentiary are reportedly reassuming control. Police are urging citizens to take justice into their own hands.
"If you don't kill the criminals, they will all come back," Reuters reports a Haitian police officer shouted over a loudspeaker.
Nighttime is especially dangerous is some neighbourhoods, prompting some locals to carry machetes and travel in groups to fight bandits.
Medical relief workers say they are treating gunshot wounds in addition to broken bones, with many of those bullets coming form the same police forces charged with protecting citizens.
Clark reports that in some neighbourhoods, citizens have set up blockades at the ends of their streets, in an effort to prevent bandits from coming in.
United Nations Chief Ban Ki-moon says he had recommended to the Security Council that 1,500 police and 2,000 troops be added to the 9,000-member UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti, to provide further security.
Alain Le Roy, the UN peacekeeping chief, told reporters that the reason for more troops is three-fold: securing the humanitarian convoys; creating a "humanitarian corridor," and building a reserve force in case the situation "unravels" further, he said.
Clark says the key to keeping the lid on the violence is to get the food, water and supplies out to the people quickly.
"Everybody knows the consequences of not getting the food out and that's that you could reach a tipping point where desperation simply overwhelms the relief effort," he said.
Source:edmonton.ctv.ca/
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