Web site seeks to reunite Katrina-hit families

HOUSTON: Photos of children separated from their parents by Hurricane Katrina have been posted on a Web site by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in an attempt to reunite families.

Photos of more than two dozen children found in Louisiana were posted on the organization's Web site, together with sometimes-scanty information available about them. There was also an entry for one child without a picture.

One entry about a little boy apparently too small to speak properly reads: "His name may be Neiamaya or Jeremiah. His date of birth is unknown; however, he is believed to be about 2 years old."

A five-month-old baby, named Jordan Barnes, was also among the children. He was transferred from a hospital in New Orleans to Baton Rouge General Hospital due to Katrina but his mother's whereabouts were unknown.

For those unable to access Internet in areas where Katrina knocked out electricity, the center has set up a telephone hotline for families separated during the hurricane, which hit last Monday and in the flooding and chaos, which followed.

The center has also posted information about missing children and adults in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

Several of the photos have been stamped "resolved," and the center's president, Ernie Allen, told CNN that workers, in cooperation with other agencies, has already been able to find mothers of children held in a shelter in San Antonio, Texas.

Thousands of people may have been killed by Katrina and its aftermath when flood barriers protecting New Orleans from an adjacent lake burst and hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated.