"Help us," pleaded survivors of Hurricane Matthew in southern Haiti as they massed in shelters or in crumpled homes along a shredded coast. In several towns joined by a debris-strewn road, residents begged for water and food from passersby. Many said they felt abandoned by aid groups in the country who were nowhere in sight. In Port-Salut, a former tourist town mostly flattened by the storm on Tuesday, some of around 400 people taking refuge in a school said they had been without basic care for nearly a week. "We've received nothing at all. The situation is really grave," Antony Bergel told AFP. "We're waiting for a lot of help. We need shelters, water, food."
Around the school, houses were sliced open by fallen trees, most of them stripped of roofs. Palm trees left standing were stripped of fronds on one side and often bent over – forlorn, lopsided testimony to the violent winds that had struck. Those in the school said they had been visited on Saturday by a small Doctors Without Borders team that bandaged open wounds, but with no other attention from organisations that include several UN agencies operating in the desperately poor country.
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