The US is to send another 4,000 troops to Haiti to assist the earthquake relief effort in its third troop surge to the devastated country.
The move, which will increase the number of US troops involved in the huge aid effort to 16,000, will mean diverting Marines who were to be deployed in the Gulf and Africa.
The surge will comprise a three-ship unit of 1,700 sailors and 2,300 Marines, the US Defence Department announced today, joining the 12,000 troops already there.
The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and USS Nassau Amphibious Ready Group will significantly increase the ability to quickly provide aid, the US Navy said in a statement.
The Marines were originally destined for the US Central Command region, which covers Iraq and Afghanistan. Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, decided to divert the troops based on the “urgent needs” in Haiti, the navy said.
Master Sergeant Keith Milks, a Marine spokesman, told Fox News that the unit was doing what it was built to do “They’re designed to be ready for any mission and to go anywhere in the world they’re needed,” he said.
“Their mission in Haiti will depend on the needs of the Haitians but the group will bring with them food and medical supplies with the means to distribute it all over Haiti.”
As the disaster entered its eighth day, international rescue teams began to pull back, with hopes fading of finding many more survivors in the rubble. However, there were still extraordinary tales of survival as a 23-day-old baby girl, a five-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl were dragged from the ruins.
The baby was found alive in the rubble of a house in Jacmel, in southern Haiti, on Tuesday after surviving for a week without food, French radio reported.
The survival of the 11-year-old, dug from the wreckage of her family’s home by neighbours, “truly is a miracle”, said doctors at a clinic run by French charities, adding that she “came back to life bit by bit”.
The girl’s mother, a cleaning lady at the UN mission in Port-Au-Prince, said that one of her five children, a five-year-old boy, was killed in the quake.
She said of her daughter: “I haven’t told her yet that her favourite little brother died. She’s still very weak.”