Floods kill 250 as tropical storm Jeanne lashes Haiti

TROPICAL storm Jeanne brought raging floodwaters to Haiti, killing at least 250 people and leaving dozens of families huddled on rooftops as the storm pushed further out into the open seas, officials said.

Floods tore through the north-western coastal town of Gonaives and surrounding areas, covering crops and turning roads into rivers. Workers with the Catholic humanitarian agency Caritas Internationalis picked up 62 bodies in trucks and counted another 18 at a morgue in Gonaives, said RevVenel Suffrard, the organisation’s director.

The floods killed 160 more people in other parts of the country, mostly in the northwest, said an interior ministry spokesman.

Jeanne didn’t appear likely to hit the storm-battered south-eastern US. It was expected to turn south over the next two days and head back out into the Atlantic.

The storm hit Haiti four months after floods killed more than 3,000 people on the Haitian-Dominican border.