Bush visit: President Bush returned to Louisiana yesterday to shore up both the relief effort and his embattled presidency as the death toll a week after Hurricane Katrina was predicted to rise as high as 10,000.
The president flew to Baton Rouge and visited a church relief centre to talk to survivors and relief workers.
"All levels of the government are doing the best they can," he said, before flying on to visit another devastated community along the coast in Mississippi. "So long as any life is in danger, we've got work to do."
Some victims at the relief centre were still sleeping on mattresses on the floor when Mr Bush and his wife Laura arrived. The crowd quickly grew when survivors realised the president had come to see them.
"We can help save lives once a person finds a shelter such as this," he said. "The response of this country has been amazing." He said the country would "do what it takes" to help people get back on their feet.
He signed T-shirts, hugged women holding babies and sat on a bed next to pregnant Ailisa Eugene, of Metairie, Louisiana.
"He's doing good now, I guess, since he came down to see it for himself," said one evacuee at the centre, Milton Beverly of Jefferson parish, Louisiana.
Many other evacuees at the centre remained unimpressed. Mildred Brown, who has been there since Tuesday with her husband, mother-in-law and cousin, said: "I'm not interested in hand-shaking. I'm not interested in photo ops. This is going to take a lot of money."
Bodies were yesterday being collected from swamped houses across New Orleans and brought to an improvised morgue in St Gabriel, 12 miles south of Baton Rouge, for identification. The coastguard continued its search for survivors trapped on rooftops or on the upper stories of flooded buildings.
"About 40,000 are unaccounted for," the New Orleans mayor, Ray Nagin, told WLL radio. He told NBC that "it wouldn't be unthinkable to have 10,000 dead".
The mayor warned that more than $1 million (€800,000) worth of natural gas was leaking into the gulf, creating fresh hazards.
Tens of thousands of residents of Jefferson parish, which adjoins the city, tried to return to their homes yesterday. They were being allowed in for 12 hours to collect belongings and assess damage in an area that their parish president, Aaron Broussard, described as "looking like Somalia or Iraq".
Mr Bush's visit was his second to the disaster zone in four days, as more reports of government incompetence surfaced amid calls for the dismissal of top officials, particularly at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).
The Chicago Tribune reported that a huge assault ship, the USS Bataan, had been deployed in the Gulf of Mexico when the hurricane struck. Despite the fact it had six operating rooms and 600 hospital beds, and was willing to help, Fema did not use it all week.
A New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune, published an open letter to the president calling for every official at Fema to be fired, "director Michael Brown especially".
At the Bethany World Prayer Center, where dozens of evacuees are being cared for, Mr Bush was with Dallas religious broadcaster TD Jakes and Baton Rouge mayor Kip Holden, who are both black, as he spoke to reporters.
Some black leaders have accused relief officials of not taking the crisis seriously enough because many of its victims are poor and black.
Mr Bush has been under fire from Democrats and Republicans alike for a sluggish federal response to a flood that has made hundreds of thousands homeless.
Mr Bush has not publicly singled out anyone for criticism, although there has been some finger-pointing. "All levels of government are doing the best they can," Mr Bush said.
The outcry has triggered a major political crisis for Mr Bush, already suffering from the lowest public approval ratings of his presidency. - (Guardian service, Reuters)