**The UN says international teams have rescued 121 people from the rubble in Haiti, as the fight goes on to save lives a week after a deadly quake hit.**One of the latest to have been saved is a 69-year-old woman pulled from the ruins of a church in the capital, Port-au-Prince, by a Mexican rescue team.
The US military defended its handling of the rescue operation as aid groups complained of delays in getting aid.
Haitian President Rene Preval said aid delivery was the main problem now.
Help came “very fast,” Mr Preval told a French radio station. “When it arrives, the question is: where are the trucks to transport it, where are the depots”
Even as rescuers raced to find more survivors and deliver aid to the hundreds of thousands made homeless, a magnitude six quake hit the region, the US Geological Survey said.
Desperate measures
Although some aid has started to reach desperate survivors, hundreds of thousands are still without food or water, a full week after the disaster.
“We were forced to buy a saw in the market to continue amputations”
Loris de Filippi
Medicins Sans Frontieres
In pictures: Haiti one week on
US opens doors to Haiti orphans
Aid agencies, and some governments, have complained at delays in bringing in aircraft full of equipment.
Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said its cargo plane with 12 tonnes of medical supplies had been turned away from the congested Port-au-Prince airport three times since Sunday.
It said five patients died from lack of the supplies it carried.
“We were forced to buy a saw in the market to continue amputations,” the group’s Loris de Filippi told the Reuters news agency in Cite Soleil.
But the US military has defended its efforts in the face of vast logistical challenges.
“We’re doing everything in our power to speed aid to Haiti as fast as humanly possible,” said Gen Douglas Fraser, head of US Southern Command.
He said they plan to start using two other airports, at Jacmel in Haiti and San Isidro in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, in the coming days.
Amazing rescues
One full week after the magnitude seven quake devastated the country, search-and-rescue teams were emerging from the ruins with unbelievable success stories.
Ena Zizi, 69, was rescued from the wreckage of the residence of Haiti’s Roman Catholic archbishop on Monday, a day before crews recovered the body of the archbishop himself, Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot.
Another survivor, 26-year-old Lozama Hotteline, was rescued from beneath a collapsed supermarket with the help of teams from Turkey and France.
Television pictures showed her smiling and singing as she was carried to safety.
According to the UN, an extra 31 people were rescued by international teams on Wednesday, up from 90 on Tuesday.
Haitian officials say the quake has killed up to 200,000, injured some 250,000, and made 1.5 million homeless.
Aid challenges
In a bid to speed up the delivery of aid and stem looting and violence, US troops have stepped up their presence in the quake-ravaged country.
US Black Hawk helicopters swooped down on the grounds of Haiti’s wrecked presidential palace on Tuesday, dropping scores of US troops who moved to secure a nearby hospital and set up aid distribution points.
US Army Maj Gen Daniel Allyn, the deputy commander for relief operations in Haiti, said the military had delivered 400,000 bottles of water and 300,000 food rations since last Tuesday’s earthquake.
He said the number of US troops will grow to 10,000 in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council voted to temporarily boost its peacekeeping forces by 3,500 personnel. UN officials said they would accompany US troops as they delivered supplies.
Improved security
While military escorts are still needed to deliver relief supplies, the United Nations said fears of violence and looting had eased.
“The overall security situation in Port-au-Prince remains stable, with limited, localised violence and looting occurring,” the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
So far, feared infectious diseases have not shown up, although many injured faced the immediate threats of tetanus and gangrene, and hospitals are overwhelmed.
The Pentagon said a navy hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, had received its first Haitian patients.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the military is sending additional ships to help with earthquake recovery in Haiti, including one that could remove debris blocking the main port.
The World Food Programme said it was planning to bring in 10,000 gallons (40,000 litres) of diesel a day from the neighbouring Dominican Republic as Haitian fuel supplies dried up.
Haitian officials say the death toll from the quake was likely to be between 100,000 and 200,000, and that 75,000 bodies had already been buried in mass graves.