People left homeless by Hurricane Katrina told horrific stories of rape, murder and trigger-happy guards in two New Orleans centers that were set up as shelters but became places of violence and terror.

Police and National Guard troops on Saturday closed down the two centers ? the Superdome arena and the city?s convention center ? but then penned the storm victims outside in sweltering heat to keep them from trying to walk out of the city until they were evacuated from the scene.

Military helicopters and buses took away thousands of people who waited in orderly lines in stifling heat outside the flooded convention center. They completed the evacuation by late afternoon.

The refugees, waiting to be taken to sports stadiums and other huge shelters across Texas and northern Louisiana, described how the convention center and the Superdome became lawless hellholes beset by rape and murder. Several residents of the impromptu shantytown recounted two horrific incidents where those charged with keeping people safe had killed them instead.

In one, a young man was run down and then shot by a New Orleans police officer, in another a man seeking help was gunned down by a National Guard soldier, witnesses said. Police here refused to discuss or confirm either incident. National Guard spokesman Lt. Col Pete Schneider said ?I have not heard any information of a weapon being discharged.?

?They killed a man here last night,? Steve Banka, 28, told Reuters. ?A young lady was being raped and stabbed. And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them, and he jumped up on the truck?s windscreen and they shot him dead.?

Body in the street

Wade Batiste, 48, recounted another tale. ?Last night at 8 p.m. they shot a kid of just 16. He was just crossing the street. They ran him over, the New Orleans police did, and then they got out of the car and shot him in the head.?

The young man?s body lay in the street by the Convention Center?s entrance on Saturday morning, covered in a black blanket, a stream of congealed blood staining the street around him. Nearby his family sat in shock. A member of that family, Africa Brumfield, 32, confirmed the incident but declined to be quoted about it, saying her family did not wish to discuss it. But she spoke of general conditions here.

?There are rapes going on here. Women cannot go to the bathroom without men. They are raping them and slitting their throats. They keep telling us the buses are coming but they never leave,? she said through tears. People here said there were now 22 bodies of adults and children stored inside the building, but troops guarding the building refused to confirm that and threatened to beat reporters seeking access to the makeshift morgue.

People trying to walk out are forced back at gunpoint ? something troops said was for their own safety. ?It?s sad, but how far do you think they would get,? one soldier said. ?They have us living here like animals,? said Wyvonnette Grace-Jordan, here with five children, the youngest only six weeks old. ?We have only had two meals, we have no medicine and now there are thousands of people defecating in the streets. This is wrong. This is the United States of America.?

One National Guard soldier who asked not to be named for fear of punishment from his commanding officer said of the lack of medical attention at the center, ?They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and Afghanistan than here.?

The Louisiana National Guard soldier said, ?We are doing the best we can with the resources we have, but almost all of our guys are in Iraq.? Across town at the Superdome, where as many as 38,000 refugees camped out until Wednesday night when evacuation buses first came, the 4,000 still there were corralled outside, hoping to get on four waiting buses with seats for only 200.

The scene at the sports stadium was one of abject filth. Crammed into a small area after the building was shut to them on Friday night, those remaining sat amid heaps of garbage, piled in places waist high. The stench of human waste pervaded the interior of the now vacant stadium.

Humanitarian aid

One police officer told Reuters there were 100 people in a makeshift morgue at the Superdome, mostly people who died of heat exhaustion, and that six babies had been born there since last weekend, when people arrived to take shelter.

At the arena, too, there was much talk of bedlam after dark. ?We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom,? one National Guard soldier told Reuters. ?Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death.?

But the brutal experience came to an abrupt and welcome end on Saturday. After days of waiting, buses and helicopters arrived and evacuated all the people at both the convention center and the Superdome in an operation that lasted eight hours.

By 6 p.m. at the convention center, all that was left was a street full of trash, belongings left behind in the rush to leave, and an acrid stench.

Impoverished Afghanistan will give $100,000 for relief efforts in the US in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the US embassy said. Ambassador Ronald Neumann thanked the Afghan people at a ceremony yesterday at which the aid was pledged by the government on behalf of the people. ?Their compassion and generosity bears testimony to the strength of the ties between our two peoples.?

Iran has also offered, yesterday, to send aid to victims of Katrina, becoming the latest US foe to extend assistance to the country often dubbed the ?Great Satan? in the Islamic republic. ?The victims have complained about the lack of timely assistance and we are prepared to send our contributions through the Red Crescent,? said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. ?If Iran?s help is needed and requested we?d respond to the call.?

And Pope Benedict announced on Saturday he had asked the Vatican?s central charity organisation, Cor Unum, to coordinate Roman Catholic aid for Katrina victims. ?We have all been pained in the last few days by the disaster caused by the hurricane in the United States of America, particularly in New Orleans.?

Hurricane Katrina struck the southern US coast on Aug. 29, wrecking New Orleans and possibly killing thousands.

Marl EGAN