Flood death toll surges to 900

Haitians turned to US-led troops and international agencies for help as the death toll climbed to about 900 following floods that ravaged Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Hundreds more were missing and presumed dead.

While US and Canadian troops handed out rations of bread, fruit and bottled water to Haitian survivors, teams from the Red Cross and the United Nations fanned out to assess the damage.

Health officials feared as many as 1,000 people could be dead in the single southern Haitian town of Mapou, said Margarette Martin, the government’s representative for the southeast region in nearby Jacmel.

But only about 300 bodies had been counted so far, said Dr Yvon Lavissiere, the health director for the region.

The town of several thousand people, 30 miles southeast of the capital of Port-au-Prince, is still isolated by mud and landslides. The town is in a valley that often floods when it rains.

Martin said officials believed hundreds more may have died because houses were submerged and rescuers saw bodies underwater that they were unable to retrieve.

In the Haitian border village of Fond Verrettes, meanwhile, US and Canadian troops handed out food to hundreds of survivors who lined up seeking help.

Troops in the US-led force were sent to stabilise Haiti after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s ouster on February 29. Since then the new interim government has struggled to provide even basic services.

Rains over the weekend lashed the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic, sweeping away entire neighbourhoods.

At least 417 bodies had been recovered in the Dominican Republic, and officials said some 400 were missing.

Of more than 450 bodies recovered in Haiti, about 100 were found in the southern town of Grand Gosier, said Civil Protection Director Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste. Fifty more corpses were found elsewhere in Haiti, officials said.

In Fond Verrettes, more than 158 people were missing and presumed dead.

“The river took everything. There isn’t anything left,” said Jermanie Vulsont, a mother who said the rushing water swept away her five children in Fond Verrettes, about 35 miles southeast of Port-au-Prince.

Rushing waters and mudslides swept away most homes in Fond Verrettes, leaving it looking like a barren riverbed with stunned residents wondering about and asking troops for help.

Dominican authorities buried more than 250 bodies immediately, some where they were found and others in a mass grave. Authorities told families there was no time to identify many of the bodies because they were badly decomposed and posed health risks if moved.