Reply #4: New Orleans Begins Counting Its Dead

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20050904/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_katrina_6

By ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writer 12 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans turned much of its attention Sunday to gathering up and counting the dead across a ghastly landscape awash in perhaps thousands of corpses. "It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine," the nation's homeland security chief warned.

As authorities struggled to keep order, police shot and killed at least five people Sunday after gunmen opened fire on a group of contractors traveling across a bridge on their way to make repairs, authorities said.

Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said police shot at eight people carrying guns, killing five or six.

Fourteen contractors were traveling across the Danziger Bridge under police escort when they came under fire, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers. They were on their way to launch barges into Lake Pontchartrain to help plug the breach in the 17th Street Canal, Hall said. None of the contractors was killed, Hall said.