One rioter, a man in his 30s, was killed outright by bullets to the head as the crowd grabbed produce in the Marche Hyppolite.
Another looter quickly snatched the rucksack off the dead man's back as clashes continued and police reinforcements descended on the area armed with pump-action shotguns and assault rifles.
It came as predictions of the death toll from the Haitian earthquake rose to 200,000 as mounting desperation at lack of aid threatens to tilt the country into anarchy.
With up to three million survivors still cut off from outside rescue efforts, the United Nations said the disaster was the worst it had ever dealt with.
Aid officials fear a lapse into all-out lawlessness in coming days unless US troops can get through with vital food, medicine and water deliveries, which are being hampered by the sheer scale of devastation. There were continued incidents of looting, and isolated reports of rescue workers being stoned by angry crowds.
The UN's warning came as the full picture of the horror in the flattened capital of Port au Prince emerged. Haitian ministers claimed the body count could rise far beyond the 50,000 estimate made by the Red Cross officials on Friday, saying that 50,000 bodies had already been buried. Trucks piled high with corpses delivered them to mass graves outside the stricken city, with thousands more still lying uncollected on the streets or buried under heavy rubble.
"We have already collected around 50,000 dead bodies," said interior minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime. "We anticipate there will be between 100,000 and 200,000 dead in total, although we will never know the exact number."
If that casualty count is confirmed, it would make Tuesday's 7.0 magnitude earthquake one of the ten deadliest on record. The death toll would also rival that of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which claimed roughly 250,000 lives. However, officials with knowledge of both incidents said the Haitian disaster - which hit a country already barely functional - posed an infinitely tougher relief challenge.
"This is a historic disaster," said UN spokesman Elisabeth Byrs, whose own organisation has lost 36 local staff in the earthquake. "We have never been confronted with such a disaster in the UN memory. It is like no other."
The UN undersecretary general for peacekeeping, Alain Le Roy, added: "There have been some incidents where people were looting or fighting for food. They are desperate, they have been three days without food or any assistance.
"We have to make sure that the situation doesn't unravel, but for that we need very much to ensure that the assistance is coming as quickly as possible."
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was due to land in Port au Prince on Saturday to meet with President Rene Preval, who himself has been rendered homeless by the tremor. The Haitian government has handed over control of its airport to the US military, which has landed 1,000 troops into the country already and will bring another 9,000 in coming days to supervise aid deliveries and ensure stability. Some US soldiers had to keep large crowds at bay outside the airport, where some aid supplies have now got stuck because of the difficulties of transporting them into the disaster zone. Doctors at some of the few functioning field clinics complained that they had already run out of medicines.
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