The European Union plans to send a military mission to Haiti to help provide shelter for earthquake victims ahead of the rainy season in March, foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has said.
‘Shelter is the most burning need,’ Ms Ashton said in a statement at an EU summit in Brussels.
Haiti's government and the UN had requested the military mission, she said.
EU officials gave no details of the size of the mission.
The EU has been providing humanitarian assistance for victims of the January disaster and deployed paramilitary police to help protect the relief effort.
Earlier, reports from Haiti said a judge had decided to release ten US missionaries accused of kidnapping 33 children and trying to take them out of the country.
According to the Reuters news agency, a judicial source said the missionaries, who have been in jail since they were stopped at Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic nearly two weeks ago, could be released as early as today.
The five men and five women, most of whom belong to an Idaho-based Baptist church, have denied any intentional wrongdoing.
They claim they were only trying to help orphans left destitute by the quake.
The reports say the judge has accepted that the missionaries had no criminal intentions.
Yesterday, Haiti raised the death toll from last month's quake to more than 217,000, while the focus turned to providing shelter for the homeless before heavy rains and hurricane season.
The Haitian government also declared a day of mourning tomorrow to mark one month since the quake struck.
