HAITI: Survivors of devastating flooding in Haiti wandered mud-clogged streets in search of food yesterday as officials said the death toll could rise above 660.
Tropical storm Jeanne swept north of Haiti during the weekend, drenching the impoverished Caribbean nation of 8 million, inundating cities and sending deadly mudslides through towns and villages.
The government put the death toll at 662 and expected it to rise as relief workers recovered bodies and reached areas isolated by the now receding water.
The known toll included 550 deaths in Gonaives, 65 in Haiti's north-west province and 47 in other towns.
Ms Elie Cantave, the top government official for the province of Artibonite, Haiti's most fertile agricultural area, said the toll could rise as about 400 people were missing in Gonaives and surrounding towns.
Relief supplies were starting to reach the worst-hit areas, but the pace was slowed by waterlogged roads and worries about security in a country that is still unstable after an armed revolt ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February.
In Gonaives, a coastal city of 200,000 where large areas were inundated at the weekend, officials said 550 people died, many more were missing and half the population needed immediate assistance with food, water and shelter.
"I lost five people \ in the floods and I don't have anything, no water, no food, nothing," said one stunned resident, Mercidieu Pierre-Andre.
Water was still waist-high in places and mud on the windows of homes illustrated a desperate tale of rising water which sent people clambering on to their roofs to survive.
Some people were left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Cars were submerged and dead animals littered streets.
The World Food Programme sent a convoy of 12 trucks with 40 tonnes of food to Gonaives, up a road still waterlogged in parts, and hoped to start handing it out by today after ensuring that distribution points would be secure, said regional WFP spokesman Mr Alejandro Chicheri.
Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, is chronically vulnerable to flooding because widespread deforestation has stripped the topsoil from its hills and mountains. Flooding in May killed about 2,000 people.
UN forces maintaining the peace after President Aristide's departure were helping with rescue efforts and providing transportation for relief shipments.
Gonaives residents recounted clinging to trees to survive or seeing their relatives die before their eyes.
"The water started to grow high, but we never thought it was going to get so high," said Ms Josephine Mesadieu (20). "Then it started to get up to our necks, then I had to swim. My younger brother and sisters could not do so, they died."
The interim Prime Minister, Mr Gerard Latortue, visited Gonaives by helicopter yesterday and was travelling later to other flooded areas, including the northern city of Port-de-Paix and, if his group could land, La Tortue island off the north coast.
At the United Nations, the interim President Boniface Alexandre appealed for world aid at the opening of the annual General Assembly session in New York.
Tropical storm Jeanne also killed 11 people in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and two in the US territory of Puerto Rico.
Jeanne, now a hurricane with 150 k.p.h. winds, meandered in the Atlantic about 785 km east of the Bahamas' Great Abaco Island on Tuesday. Forecasters at the US National Hurricane Centre said the storm posed no immediate threat to land. - (Reuters)