Cheney Promises to Rebuild Disaster Zone

United States vice-president Dick Cheney has begun a tour of states affected by Hurricane Katrina, as it emerged that emergency officials in Louisiana were preparing 25,000 body bags for the disaster victims.

In a visit to ravaged areas in Mississippi, he promised that disaster-hit areas would be rebuilt and mobile homes moved to the region as temporary accommodation for the worst-hit.

The international relief effort also continued, with a Mexican army convoy crossing into the US for the first time since the 1846 Mexican-American war to provide water treatment plants and mobile kitchens to feed 7,000 people a day.

The US government today flagged up a role for Nato's newly formed response force in delivering aid to stricken areas of the Gulf coast.

An Airbus Super Transporter landed in Mobile, Alabama, this morning, carrying 22 tonnes of bedding and tents from the UK and France. A mobile hospital is also expected to be delivered tomorrow.

Cheney's visit to the region comes after a week out of the public eye which has attracted adverse commentary from across the political spectrum.

He is expected to continue to New Orleans later in the day after meetings with officials in Gulfport and Biloxi.

Predictions of the death toll from the hurricane and its repercussions have ranged from a few hundred to 10,000.

The official figure of confirmed dead in Louisiana was 71 yesterday, but this is expected to rise. According to official estimates some 40,000 people are missing, though many of these are likely to have survived but been displaced.

There is still no official estimate because dealing with the bodies still floating in floodwaters or lying on the streets has been a low priority during the hunt for survivors. However, with more emergency resources finally in the area officials are under growing pressure to deal with the deteriorating bodies.

A website set up by the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross listed more than 117,000 names of people who have not been located. Hundreds of names have already been removed as survivors make contact.

There are growing calls for a more accurate death toll to be established so that the scale of the disaster can be better understood. [Read more here]

The latest reports from New Orleans highlight the terrible smell in the disaster area. Those working there are now using masks to cope with it.

The first government tests confirmed yesterday that the amount of sewage-related bacteria in the floodwaters is at least 10 times higher than acceptable safety levels. Three people are also known to have died because of the floodwater.

British officials are still trying to trace 96 UK nationals believed to have been in Hurricane Katrina's path, and other countries are also trying to find their citizens.

Recovery teams are finding more and more bodies. More than 30 residents of a nursing home in St Bernard Parish, 20 miles east of downtown New Orleans, were yesterday found dead. A week on from the hurricane, the victims lay where they died - draped over a wheelchair, wrapped in a shower curtain or lying on the floor in several inches of muck.

Police were preparing to begin forced evacuations in New Orleans, where between 10,000 and 15,000 people remain. Some are insisting they will not leave despite a demand by the mayor, Ray Nagin, on Tuesday for the entire city, including dry areas where some homes are relatively undamaged, to be evacuated.

However, police appeared to be unready to start using force. Police Superintendent Eddie Compass told a news conference his officers would not forcibly remove residents until all those who wanted to leave voluntarily had done so. Another senior officer said forced evictions would start "in the next few days".

One civilian still in the city, Patrick McCarty, who owns several buildings and lives in one of them, in the Lower Garden district, said: "A large group of young men armed with M-16s just arrived at my door and told me that I have to leave. While not saying they would arrest you, the inference is clear."

Mr Nagin warned that the combination of fetid water, fires and natural gas leaks after Hurricane Katrina made conditions too dangerous to allow people to stay.

Dr Julie Gerberding, chief of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, warned stragglers not to even touch the floodwater and pleaded: "If you haven't left the city yet, you must do so."

The storm is expected to cause 400,000 job losses, a report for Congress said yesterday; some private estimates of the cost in unemployment terms have put the figure at 1 million jobs. Today it emerged that around 10,000 people affected by the storm had filed for unemployment benefits last week.

The figure is expected to rise dramatically as many claims offices in the path of the hurricane have been shut.

The US president, George Bush, has asked Congress for up to $50bn (£27bn) in aid for the recovery effort, which is currently costing up to $1bn a day, according to Thad Cochran, a senior Republican senator.