Looting reported as desperation grows in Haiti

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Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) — Several hundred Haitians broke into a damaged supply store Monday in downtown Port-au-Prince, looting it in a sign of growing desperation six days after an earthquake toppled much of the city.

Fights broke out among some of the looters. Young men holding two-by-fours with nails hammered into them began attacking each other.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper saw one man beaten until one of his arms started bleeding.

One boy collapsed onto the street in a pool of blood, Cooper said, describing the situation as “a frenzy of looting.”

Police fired into the air, hoping to break up the incident. Within about an hour, and with the store entirely looted, the crowd moved to another store half a block away.

Watch as Cooper reports on the chaotic situation

People weren’t stealing food — they were taking candles for their homes without electricity or in hopes of selling them, Cooper said. Some came along with money, buying supplies from looters — in some cases in the hopes of selling for more somewhere else.

“There’s nothing normal here,” Cooper said.

Other cases of looting have been reported, though generally involving smaller crowds.

See the latest developments from Haiti

Earlier Monday, Kenneth Merten, the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, said that “overall, people are very calm.”

“The first line of law and order here is, No. 1, the Haitian police, No. 2, the U.N. forces. The U.S. forces are standing by to provide security as needed,” Merten told CNN’s “American Morning.”

Read full coverage of the earthquake in Haiti

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said U.N. officials were working to make sure that as many people as possible got humanitarian aid.

“The Haitian people need to see that today is better than yesterday,” Ban said. “They need to believe the future will be better than the past. That is our global responsibility.”

Former President Clinton, the U.N. envoy to Haiti, arrived in the country Monday with his daughter, Chelsea. Clinton was to meet with local officials to discuss how best to proceed with recovery operations.

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Rescue crews on the ground have saved more than 75 people from the rubble as they search for survivors six days after the quake devastated much of the country, Merten said.

Tens of thousands of food rations and sanitary packages have been handed out, Merten said.

The exhaustive work in perilous conditions earned the gratitude of people worldwide, but questions also grew about why much more wasn’t being done.

Some teams available to take off to Haiti couldn’t fly in due to a continuing bottleneck at Port-au-Prince’s airport. Critical supplies were not making their way into the country at the needed pace.

And at a U.S. medical facility, doctors were asking why they didn’t have critical equipment or the ability to perform surgeries, while a field hospital set up by Israel did.

“The disaster was the quake. This is the disaster that’s following in its wake,” said Dr. Jennifer Furin of Harvard Medical School, referring to the lack of better medical care on the ground. Medical operations were under way off the coast on a U.S. ship for some patients who could be flown there.

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Families were “with their loved ones who they were so excited to see alive, only now to watch them die a slow, painful death from their rotting flesh because the infections are out of control and they need surgery,” Furin said.

“I’ve been here since Thursday. No one except the Israeli hospital has taken any of our patients,” she told CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen.

Cohen visited the Israeli hospital and said it was “like another world,” with imaging equipment and other machinery. “They have actual operating rooms, and it’s just amazing.”

How has Israel, a small country on the other side of the world, set up an operating field hospital while the United States has not? “It’s a frustrating thing that I really can’t explain,” Furin said, adding, “We’re desperate.”

iReport: Earthquake’s aftermath

The United States was conducting medical operations on the USS Carl Vinson off the Haitian coast.

At the request of the military, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent and a neurosurgeon, was the lead surgeon in an operation on a 12-year-old Haitian girl rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.

A fragment of concrete had penetrated the girl’s brain. “They did not have a neurosurgeon in the area,” Gupta said.

The surgery was successful, and “the girl is going to do great,” he said.

Watch as Gupta asked to perform surgery aboard ship

The U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort was due within 48 hours, Gupta said.

But only a limited number of patients can be flown out to the ships. A more advanced field hospital was needed to save lives.

Merten said the relief effort overall was moving “as best as it possibly can.”

“I think people need to understand that out in Port-au-Prince it looks — I think like Tokyo probably did after World War II. It’s flat. It looks like atomic bomb went off. The streets are completely blocked,” Merten told CNN’s “American Morning.” “There are rescue efforts going on. It’s just difficult to physically get there.”

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No overall death toll has been declared; estimates range from 100,000 to 150,000 in Port-au-Prince alone.

iReport: Earthquake victims

The earthquake brought the highest death toll of U.N. workers ever in a single event. Though officials do not yet know how many people are trapped beneath the rubble, 46 have been declared dead and hundreds are missing, said U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky.

Watch as U.N. chief tours collapsed building

The U.S. State Department has confirmed the deaths of 24 Americans. Another about 25 are presumed to be dead, but those deaths have not been confirmed, the State Department said Monday.

Most of the dead bodies that once lay in the streets of Port-au-Prince have been moved. Many were dumped into huge pits. Most of the dead will never be identified.

Some residents wedge pieces of orange peel inside their nostrils to mask the smell of death.