MASSIVE explosions rocked the New Orleans riverfront as chaos spread across the disaster city, and British students reported the horror of death and rape.

The early morning blasts were a few miles south of the French Quarter and jolted residents awake. The extent of any possible damage was not immediately known.

The explosions came as British students caught up in the horror of Hurricane Katrina spoke of their four days of "hell" at the New Orleans Superdome.

They described how their place of refuge descended into a scene of terror as people ran wild with knives and guns, used crack cocaine and hurled racial abuse.

Meanwhile, President Bush was coming under increasing criticism over his management of the crisis.

New Orleans' top emergency official called his government's relief effort a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless city.

Terry Ebbert, the city's head of emergency operations, added it had taken too long to evacuate the Superdome, which quickly became "a squalid shelter for tens of thousands of storm victims".

Hungry

In one of the grimmest scenes, outside the New Orleans Convention Centre, an old man lay dead in a fold-up chair as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her.

Tourists, meanwhile, were turned out of hotels to face terror on the streets. Debbie Durso of Washington, Michigan, said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "Go to hell - it's every man for himself."

Up to 30 British students huddled among the thousands in the Superdome were forced to set up a makeshift security cordon to fend off abusive locals.

Jamie Trout, 22, an economics student from Sunderland, kept a record of his terrifying ordeal. He wrote: "It was like something out of Lord of the Flies - one minute everything is calm and civil, the next it descends into chaos. A man has been arrested for raping a seven-year-old in the toilet, this place is hell. The smell is horrendous, there are toilets overflowing and people everywhere."

Jamie, who had been coaching football to disabled children as part of the Camp America scheme, said people were shouting racial abuse at the Britons because they were white.

Protection

Zoe Smith, 21, from Hull, told how students set up a security cordon when the power briefly went down in the Superdome amid fears they were going to be attacked. "All us girls sat in the middle while the boys sat on the outside, with chairs as protection," she said.

News of the students' ordeal came as New Orleans descended into anarchy.

Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco declared war on looters who have made the city a menacing landscape of disorder and fear.

"They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded," she said of 300 National Guard troops who landed in New Orleans fresh from duty in Iraq. "These troops know how to shoot and kill."

The chaos deepened despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting, plans for a 10 billion dollar recovery bill in Congress and a government relief effort President Bush called the biggest in US history.

Meanwhile, amid fears for his safety, musician Fats Domino, 77, was photographed being rescued by boat, his daughter Karen said.