This just in from Houston:

One evacuee said the victims have been left “like pure animals” with no care. The New Orleans police chief said 15,000 people are trapped in the city’s convention center. And he said some are being raped and beaten.

Alan Gould, a man who is an evacuee inside the convention center, told CNN that women and small children are being raped and killed. He called it genocide.

He said officials keep giving them the runaround, saying “Help is coming. Help is coming. Help is coming.” But he said people just keep dying.

A 68-year-old minister who’s stranded with thousands of other evacuees at the New Orleans Convention Center said, “We are out here living like pure animals.”

The Rev. Isaac Clark said, “We don’t have water. We don’t have food. We don’t have help.”

A 23-year-old woman tending to her 4-year-old daughter said, “God is punishing New Orleans” for its corruption and crime.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention center. People desperately called for help, chasing after reporters, sometimes pleading and sometimes threatening.

Louisiana’s governor is declaring war on looters and others who’ve turned the streets of New Orleans into scenes of chaos and fear.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco said 300 National Guard troops have arrived in the city fresh from duty in Iraq. She said they “know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will.”

The Guard troops are carrying M-16s, which Blanco describes as “locked and loaded.”

Within the angry crowds of people trying to flee the city, shooters have targeted police officers, a security person at the Superdome and possibly a military helicopter evacuating hospital patients.

A Louisiana state police commander said many New Orleans officers have quit, saying they weren’t going to risk their lives to fight looters.

Read the rest of the story here.