NEW ORLEANS, Sept 2: The authorities in Louisiana state on Friday deployed 7,000 soldiers, including 300 Iraq-hardened ones, to New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders as the storied city fell deeper into chaos with gangs roaming the streets and corpses rotting in the sun a full four days after Hurricane Katrina lashed the US Gulf coast, exposing the government’s aid efforts as a failure.

Overnight gunfire and pre-dawn explosions heightened the panic in New Orleans on the eve of President Bush’s visit to the affected region.

Hospitals lacking drugs and power were in a desperate fight to save critically ill patients, police hid in their headquarters and thousands of people who lost relatives and everything they own in raging floodwaters sat helplessly on sidewalks waiting for help that has not come.

Hit by mounting criticism that his administration was too slow to respond, President George Bush conceded the rescue efforts were ‘not acceptable’ and promised to fix them in a hurry.

“I want to assure the people of the affected areas and this country that we’ll deploy the assets necessary to get the situation under control,” Mr Bush said as he left Washington to tour the region.

Thousands of people are feared dead and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said he was furious at the lack of help his historic city had received.

“I need reinforcements. I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man,” he said in a radio interview. “Let’s do something and let’s fix the biggest crisis in the history of this country.”

Police kept to their headquarters in fear of the anarchy as looters, shooters and gangs ruled the streets.

Plumes of thick black smoke rose after a mighty explosion rocked an industrial area hit hard by Katrina, and an apartment complex in the centre was also in flames.

Stunned residents stumbled around bodies that lay rotting and untouched. Others trudged along flooded and debris-strewn streets toward the Superdome football stadium where they hoped to be bused to safety.

Most of the victims were poor and black. As most of them have no cars, they were unable to flee the city before Katrina pounded the US Gulf coast on Monday.

THIRD WORLD SCENES: The scenes of destruction and mayhem resembled those of a major Third World refugee crisis, angering politicians and local residents who said the lack of aid was unacceptable in the world’s richest country.

“We authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq, lickety split. After 9/11 we gave the president unauthorized powers, lickety split, to help New York and other places,” an angry Nagin said.

“You mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through ... that we can’t figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need?”

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said 14,000 Guard troops along the stricken Gulf coast were on the ground and he expected 30,000 there in the coming days.

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said: “These troops are battle-tested. They have M-16s and are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will.”

But Mayor Nagin questioned why they had not come much sooner.

“I keep hearing this is coming, that is coming. Where is the beef? There is no beef in this city,” he said. “People are dying, people have lost their homes, people have lost their jobs. The city of New Orleans will never be the same.”

At the end of the interview, both he and the interviewer were overcome with emotion.

—Reuters