Safe hands: Haitian orphans arrive for medical care at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh
Bill Clinton helps load supplies at the General Hospital downtown during his one day visit to Haiti
A baby boy injured in the earthquake rests in the University de la Paix hospital in Port-au-Prince. It is estimated as many as one million children on the island have been left without one or both parents since the tragedy
Two young girls helping with the removal of debris at what used to be the Petionville market in Port-au-Prince. Child advocacy groups say the crisis in Haiti has now jumped to 'unbearable proportions'
One year old Misa Gureline Bestige reacts as she wakes up from sleeping on the street with her family and other displaced people in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
The first of Haiti's evacuated orphans have arrived in the US to begin new lives, according to reports.
However aid groups fear as many as one million more on the island have been left without one or both parents following the last week's devastating earthquake.
Just 26 children who cleared the process before the disaster struck have been taken out of the country - but Unicef has warned the scale of the crisis has jumped to 'unbearable proportions'.
The lucky few arrived for medical care at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh early on Tuesday.
The children were not orphaned by the quake but were left homeless when their orphanage on the island collapsed. An article in The Times newspaper claims Unicef estimates 380,000 children had already lost one or both parents before the quake.
Tom DiFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children's Services, (JCICS) told The Times: 'Everyone seems to be estimating, whether it's Unicef or medical groups on the ground, that we are going to have over one million orphans in Haiti at the end of this.
'That is defined as children who have lost either a mother, or a father, or both. If a father dies, how does the mother cope in a situation where you have no home, no job, you're living on the streets?
'It's an enormous figure, it's incomprehensible. We didn't have housing for them all before the earthquake, let alone now.'
There are also fears that some children may be shipped overseas without proper checks to see if any extended family members are alive, given the chaotic state of communications on the island.
In a statement quoted by The Times, JCICS said: 'Bringing children into the US, either by airlift or new adoption during a time of national emergency, can open the door for fraud, abuse and trafficking.
'Every effort must be made in a timely fashion to locate living parents and extended family members. Many children who might appear to be orphaned may in fact only be temporarily separated from their family.'
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is being urged to speed up the paperwork for up to 900 children whose adoptions were almost complete before the catastrophe occurred.
Today it was announced that Haitian orphans will be allowed temporary entry to the US to receive care after the devastating event.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said: 'We are committed to doing everything we can to help reunite families in Haiti during this very difficult time.
'While we remain focused on family reunification in Haiti, authorising the use of humanitarian parole for orphans who are eligible for adoption in the United States will allow them to receive the care they need here.'
The 'humanitarian parole policy' will be applied on a case-by-case basis to children legally confirmed as orphans eligible for adoption in another country by the Haitian government and who are being adopted by US citizens.
Also eligible are children previously identified by an adoption service as eligible for inter-country adoption and who have been matched to prospective adoptive American parents, the Homeland Security Department said.
Meanwhile the death toll is being estimated at a staggering 200,000, with 1.5 million left homeless as survivors continue to die in the streets and looters spread anarchy.
Violence flared again yesterday as hundreds clambered over the broken walls of shops to grab anything they could - including toothpaste, now valuable for lining nostrils against the stench of Port-au-Prince's dead. Police fired into the air as young men fought each other over rum and beer with broken bottles and machetes.
Gang members who broke out of a heavily damaged prison following the quake are profiting from the disaster by taking advantage of a void left by police and peacekeepers focused on disaster relief.
'If you don't kill the criminals, they will all come back,' a Haitian police officer shouted over a loudspeaker in the country's most notorious slum, imploring citizens to take justice into their own hands.
In the sprawling Cite Soleil slum, gangsters are settling into the haunts they dominated before being locked up and resuming struggles for control that never really ended once they were inside the walls of the city's notorious main penitentiary.
'The trouble is starting,' said Jean-Semaine Delice, a 51-year-old father from Cite Soleil. 'People are starting to leave their homes to go to others.'
As police urged residents to fight criminals themselves, Delice said, 'I think it's a message we should listen to.'
There is the potential for violence in any disaster zone where food and medical aid are unable to keep up with fast-growing hunger and mass casualties. But the danger is multiplied in Haiti, where self-designated rebels and freedom fighters have consistently threatened the country's fragile stability with a few weapons, some spare money for handouts and the ire of disaffected throngs.
'Even as we are digging bodies out of buildings, they are trying to attack our officers,' Cite Soleil police inspector Aristide Rosemond said, surrounded by officers wielding automatic weapons.
Neighbourhood residents say three people died and several women were raped in a small-scale turf war that gangsters nicknamed 'Belony' and 'Bled' launched in the seaside slum in the days following last Tuesday's quake.
People who live here have been told not to count on security forces for help.
The Brazilian peacekeeping unit assigned to Cite Soleil lost 18 of its 145 soldiers in the earthquake.
Ten perished when the 'Blue House' - a landmark concrete tower converted into a UN post near the slum's entrance - collapsed, leaving weapons and equipment readily available to fast-acting looters.
The UN peacekeeping mission also lost its chief, deputy chief and acting police commander.
The police lost an uncounted number of personnel and equipment, leaving a group of officers who in large part are just recently recruited and trained.
'The problem is they have weapons ... so we cannot send the population or (just) any policemen' to capture them, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said yesterday.
Bob Perito, coordinator of Haiti programs for the Washington-based US Institute of Peace think tank, said concerns about the gangs are legitimate - in the long run.
In the more immediate future, 'the gangs may be more of a nuisance,' Perito said in an interview from his Washington office.
'They are not going to challenge the US military,' he said.
'But when the US decides the emergency is over and goes home, will the reconstituted UN peacekeeping force have the coherence necessary to suppress the problem?'
There are 1,700 US troops on the ground in Haiti and 2,000 Marines off shore.
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