Haiti aftershock sows new terror

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A frightening new aftershock Wednesday forced more earthquake survivors onto the capital's streets to live and sent others fleeing to the countryside, where aid was only beginning to reach wrecked towns.

A flotilla of rescue vessels, meanwhile, led by the U.S. hospital ship Comfort, converged on Port-au-Prince harbor to help fill gaps in still-lagging global efforts to deliver water, food and medical help. Hundreds of thousands of survivors of Haiti's cataclysmic earthquake were living in makeshift tents or on blankets and plastic sheets under the tropical sun.

The strongest tremor since the Jan. 12 quake struck at 6:03 a.m., just before sunrise while many still slept. From the teeming plaza near the collapsed presidential palace to a hillside tent city, the 5.9-magnitude aftershock lasted only seconds but panicked thousands of Haitians.

"Jesus!" they cried as rubble tumbled and dust rose anew from government buildings around the plaza. Parents gathered up children and ran.

Up in the hills, where U.S. troops were helping thousands of homeless, people bolted screaming from their tents. Jajoute Ricardo, 24, came running from his house, fearing its collapse.

"Nobody will go to their house now," he said, as he sought a tent of his own. "It is chaos, for real."

A slow vibration intensified into side-to-side shaking that lasted about eight seconds - compared to last week's far stronger initial quake that seemed to go on for 30 seconds and registered 7.0 magnitude.

Throngs again sought out small, ramshackle "tap-tap" buses to take them away from the city. On Port-au-Prince's beaches, more than 20,000 people looked for boats to carry them down the coast, the local Signal FM radio reported.

But the desperation may be deeper outside the capital, closer to last week's quake epicenter.

"We're waiting for food, for water, for anything," Emmanuel Doris-Cherie, 32, said in Leogane, 25 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince. Homeless in Leogane lived under sheets draped across tree branches, and the damaged hospital "lacks everything," Red Cross surgeon Hassan Nasreddine said.

Hundreds of Canadian soldiers and sailors were deploying to that town and to Jacmel on the south coast to support relief efforts, and the Haitian government sent a plane and an overland team to assess needs in Petit-Goave, a seaside town 10 miles farther west from Leogane that was the epicent