PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - A gentle breeze blew discarded U.N. biscuit wrappings jerkily across the dust in this makeshift camp in the Haitian capital's most notorious slum.

Each gust threatened to topple the shelters of sticks and sheets that are now home to around 100 families left shelterless by the earthquake.

"We want any help we can find," said Rosemand Bolivar, a grandmother who shares a patch of dirt beneath a faded pink bed sheet with her son, his wife and their three children.

Only the most heavily armed U.N. peacekeepers venture into the sprawling seafront slum of Cite Soleil (Sun City), home to the most feared gangs in Port-au-Prince.

For days security worries prevented U.N. food deliveries - now well established in other parts of Port-au-Prince -- from reaching Cite Soleil. This delayed essential aid for increasingly desperate and hungry people three weeks after the earthquake which devastated the Caribbean state.

The U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP) has said it is increasing food distribution around the city and that it now feeds over 100,000 people a day.

But not -- at the start of the week at least -- in Cite Soleil.

"There has been an upsurge in gang violence in the last few days so we haven't been able to distribute food in Cite Soleil," Marcus Prior, WFP's spokesman in Port-au-Prince, said on Monday.

But by Thursday two sites in the slum were up and running, bringing the total in the city to 16, he said.

"We are encouraged," he said, "but there is still a long way to go."

But at the camp in Cite Soleil, some debated the merits of the little food aid that the WFP had managed to deliver earlier on ad hoc missions accompanied by U.N. troops.

Judette Cange said she knows the high-energy biscuits, called bon-bon, are packed with vitamins, but she will not give them to her children.

"They have ants in them. They have insects and they have expired already," she said, pointing to the brown crackers.

"We need rice, water, and tents. We don't want bad food."

A few white plastic wrappers are littered about the camp. They have expiry dates that are one or two days past due. Residents said they were given out by U.S. soldiers and at a nearby police station.

Some families appeared to be setting the biscuits aside in their makeshift tents, reluctant to eat them if they can find other food.

Two vendors sell balls of fried batter at the entrance to the field-turned-camp at normal, pre-disaster prices. But Haitian staples such as rice and beans are nowhere to be seen.

But the WFP biscuits have won some fans.

Bolivar, the grandmother, said the biscuits were nutritious and her children love them.

"They're good, they're good!" she said, bursting with enthusiasm.

(Editing by James Kilner in Port-au-Prince)