U.S. airlifts food, tents to quake-ravaged southern Haiti

Troops under the direction of Miami-based Southern Command have so far delivered more than 265,000 pounds of relief assistance.

U.S. military aircraft are now flying food, tarps and other material into southern Haiti amid a shift in the international relief effort to focus on helping people in the areas hardest hit by the recent earthquake to make it through hurricane season. Aircraft flying out of the capital, Port-au-Prince, arrived throughout Saturday in the mostly rural, mountainous southern peninsula that was the epicenter of the August 14 earthquake. In Jeremie, people waved and cheered as a Marine Corps unit from North Carolina descended in a tilt-rotor Osprey with pallets of rice, tarps and other supplies. Most of the material, however, wasn't destined for Jeremie. It was for distribution to remote mountain communities where landslides destroyed homes and the small plots of the many subsistence farmers in the area, said Patrick Tiné of Haiti Bible Mission, one of several groups coordinating the delivery of aid.