By Mark Egan
New Orleans - New Orleans police killed four looters who had opened fire on them on Sunday as rescue teams scoured homes and toxic waters flooding streets to find survivors and recover thousands of bloated corpses.
A fifth looter was in critical condition but no more details were available about the incident in a city where authorities are slowly regaining control after a wave of looting, murders and rapes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
"Five men who were looting exchanged gunfire with police. The officers engaged the looters when they were fired upon," said New Orleans Police Superintendent Steven Nichols.
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'It is going to be about as ugly a scene as you can imagine' US Army Corps of Engineers contractors working on a levee breach were fired on by gunmen but no one was hurt, said the corps' Mike Rogers. It was not clear if the two incidents were connected.
Six days after Katrina ripped up the Gulf Coast and sent flood waters pouring into New Orleans, no one knows how many people were killed, but government officials say the number is in the thousands.
"When we remove the water from New Orleans, we're going to uncover people who died hiding in houses, who got caught by the flood, people whose remains will be found in the street," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. "It is going to be about as ugly a scene as you can imagine."
Under fire for its slow response to the flooding, the Bush administration tried to save face on Sunday by sending top officials down to the disaster zone and pledging to do whatever it takes to clean up New Orleans and help its refugees.
President George Bush was to visit relief efforts in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Poplarville, Mississippi, on Monday - his second trip to the devastated region in less than a week.
'We have been abandoned by our own country' Battered and sickened survivors made no attempt to disguise their anger: "We have been abandoned by our own country," Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish just south of New Orleans, told NBC's Meet the Press.
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