New Orleans, Sept. 4 (Reuters): People left homeless by Hurricane Katrina told horrific stories of rape, murder and trigger-happy guards in two New Orleans centres that were set up as shelters but became places of violence and terror.

Police and National Guard troops yesterday closed down the two centres ? the Superdome arena and the city’s convention centre ? but then penned the storm victims outside in sweltering heat to keep them from trying to walk out of the city until they were evacuated from the scene.

The refugees, waiting to be taken to sports stadiums and other huge shelters across Texas and northern Louisiana, described how the convention centre and the Superdome became lawless hellholes beset by rape and murder.

Several residents of the impromptu shantytown recounted two horrific incidents where those charged with keeping people safe had killed them instead.

In one, a young man was run down and then shot by a New Orleans police officer, in another a man seeking help was gunned down by a National Guard soldier, witnesses said. Police refused to discuss or confirm either incident.

“They killed a man here last night,” Steve Banka, 28, said. “A young lady was being raped and stabbed. And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them, and he jumped up on the truck’s windscreen and they shot him dead.”

Wade Batiste, 48, recounted another tale of horror. “Last night at 8 pm they shot a kid of just 16. He was just crossing the street. They ran him over, the New Orleans police did, and then they got out of the car and shot him in the head.”

The young man’s body lay in the street by the Convention Center’s entrance yesterday, covered in a black blanket, a stream of congealed blood staining the street around him. Nearby his family sat in shock.

A member of that family, Africa Brumfield, 32, confirmed the incident but declined to be quoted about it. But she spoke of general conditions here. “There is rapes going on here. Women cannot go to the bathroom without men. They are raping them and slitting their throats. They keep telling us the buses are coming but they never leave,” she said through tears.

One soldier said of the lack of medical attention at the centre, “They (the Bush administration) care more about Iraq and Afghanistan than here.”

But the brutal experience came to an abrupt and welcome end yesterday. After days of waiting, buses and helicopters finally arrived and evacuated all the people at both the convention centre and the Superdome in an operation that lasted just eight hours. By 6 pm at the convention centre, all that was left was a street full of trash, cherished belongings left behind in the rush to leave, and an acrid stench.