Crime crackdown ordered

"The streets of New Orleans belong to its citizens, not the violent thugs who have stuck their heads out of holes in an attempt to exploit a national tragedy," said Jim Letten, US Attorney for New Orleans.

"Not one inch of the streets of the city of New Orleans will be ceded to that criminal element," said Letten.

The FBI meanwhile had an uncompromising warning, delivered by a special agent who sends SWAT teams into the hurricane-ravaged city, armed to the teeth in menacing black helicopters.

"I don't care if the threat is from international terrorists or hostile security services or thugs," said Jim Bernazzani, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent in charge in New Orleans.

Bernazzani said the bureau was being used to swoop into threatening incidents involving criminal gangs, when they were called in by police.

Louisiana prosecutors said they had temporary detention facilities already up and running, and expected people soon to be charged with offences in the outbreak of anarchy after the hurricane.

"The criminal element that is operating in New Orleans reflects that relatively small but aggressive element that was trying to fight us before," said Letten, who has moved operations to the nearby city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana's capital.

Letten said most of those running rampant around the city with looted weapons were linked to the drugs rings, which try to build individual fiefdoms in buildings and blocks of the city through intimidation.

New Orleans, once a mecca for jazz fans, collapsed into anarchy in the days following the hurricane, which struck last Monday, as bands of armed gangs roamed the streets, amid reporters of carjackings, rapes and shootings.