Haiti 's official death toll from Tropical Storm Jeanne soared to more than 1,070 and could rise to 2,000, officials announced today.
The confirmed death toll rose to 1,072 bodies recovered - 1,013 in Gonaives alone - according to Mr Dieufort Deslorges, spokesman for the government's civil protection agency.
He said the number of people missing in the floods rose to 1,250. Only a couple of dozen bodies have been identified.
Aid workers have started mass burials, with bodies rolling off dumptrucks into a deep grave in the city still littered with corpses.
There was no funeral ceremony as three trucks dumped scores of bodies into a 14-foot-deep hole at sunset yesterday. Dozens of bystanders shrieked and demanded officials collect bodies in nearby waterlogged fields.
"We're demanding they come and take the bodies from our fields. Dogs are eating them," said one bystander, listing demands made by residents of in the neighbourhood whose opposition to mass graves had delayed burials.
"We can only drink the water people died in," the 35-year-old farmer said, listing a widespread demand for potable water in the city of 250,000, with parts still knee-deep in water five days after the storm's passage.
Hurricane experts said yesterday that Jeanne - now over the open Atlantic as a hurricane - could loop around and head toward the Bahamas then threaten the south-eastern United States as early as this weekend.
It was too soon to tell where or if Jeanne would hit, but the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami warned people in the north west and central Bahamas and south-eastern US coast to beware of dangerous surf kicked up by Jeanne in coming days.
Jeanne's rain-laden system proved deadly in Haiti , where more than 98 per cent of the land is deforested and torrents of water and mudslides smashed down denuded hills and into the city, destroying homes and crops. Floodwater lines on buildings went up to 10 feet high.
Survivors in Gonaives, Haiti 's third largest city were hungry, thirsty, and increasingly desperate. United Nations peacekeepers fired into the air yesterday to keep a crowd at bay as aid workers handed out loaves of bread - the first food in days for some.
AP