'Catastrophe' food insecurity levels for 19,000 Haitians

The highest level of food insecurity has been declared in crisis-wracked Haiti for the first time, affecting around 19,000 people in the coastal neighbourhood of Cite Soleil, the UN said.

"Haiti is facing a humanitarian catastrophe," Jean-Martin Bauer, the Haiti country director for the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP), told reporters in Geneva via video-link from the Caribbean.

"The severity and the extent of food insecurity in Haiti is getting worse."

Haiti, the poorest nation in the Americas, is facing an acute political, economic, security and health crisis which has paralysed the country and sparked a breakdown of law and order.

Earlier this week, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for the immediate deployment of a special armed force.

He warned of a "dramatic deterioration in security" in a country that had been overrun by powerful criminal gangs and looters, and where a fresh cholera outbreak had been declared.

The insecurity has left people scrambling to gain access to food.

A WFP report issued showed that 4.7 million people across the country were barely able to meet food needs, including 1.8 million grappling with emergency levels of food insecurity.

The situation is particularly dire in Cite Soleil, one of Haiti's biggest slums, WFP said.

And 19,200 people there are now deemed to be at the highest level on the UN's five-scale food insecurity classification, known as IPC.