There is not one orphan among the 33 children a US Baptist group tried to take from Haiti in a do-it-yourself post-earthquake rescue mission, it has emerged.

An earthquake today shook the flood-hit Dominican border town of Jimani, where torrents of water from a river that spilled its bank killed more than 440 people earlier this week.

Heavy rains threaten the waterlogged southern border of Haiti and Dominican Republic even as rescue workers rush to collect decomposing bodies and reach villagers cut off days ago when torrents and mudslides buried entire communities.