Haiti death toll rises

GONAIVES, Haiti – Bodies remained in the streets and in growing piles outside morgues as UN peacekeepers planned the first major distribution of food and water yesterday in this city devastated by floods that have torn apart families and left hungry crowds that have mobbed truckloads of aid.

The death toll from deluges unleashed by Tropical Storm Jeanne climbed to the more than 700, Haitian officials said Tuesday, with more than 600 of them in Gonaives alone. More than 1 000 others were declared missing.Jeanne, meanwhile, regained hurricane strength over the open Atlantic this week and could head back toward the United States and threaten the storm-battered Southeast coast, including Florida, as early as this weekend, forecasters said yesterday.It was too soon to tell where or if Jeanne would hit, but the National Hurricane Center in Miami warned it could kick up dangerous surf and rip currents along islands in the northwest and central Bahamas and along the southeastern US coast over the next few days.Yesterday, people who slept uncovered in muddy streets and near piles of rubble in Gonaives’ Place d’Armes, the central square, woke to wails and another morning without breaking their fast.”Woy!” The traditional shriek of mourning cut through the air.Carcasses of pigs, goats and dogs still floated in muddy waters slowly receding from the streets in Gonaives, Haiti’s third-largest city with some 250 000 people.Not a house escaped damage.The homeless sloshed through the streets carrying belongings on their heads, while people with houses that still had roofs tried to dry scavenged clothes.Flies buzzed around bloated corpses piled high at the city’s three morgues.The electricity was off, and the stench of death hung over the city.Relatives waited outside a morgue set up in the flood-damaged General Hospital all day to identify and bury victims.But vehicles to carry bodies to the cemetery never arrived.Most bodies remained unidentified.Destilor Aldajus, a 50-year-old farmer, said he and his six children climbed onto their roof to escape the floods.But he was at the morgue looking for his wife.- Nampa-APMore than 1 000 others were declared missing.Jeanne, meanwhile, regained hurricane strength over the open Atlantic this week and could head back toward the United States and threaten the storm-battered Southeast coast, including Florida, as early as this weekend, forecasters said yesterday.It was too soon to tell where or if Jeanne would hit, but the National Hurricane Center in Miami warned it could kick up dangerous surf and rip currents along islands in the northwest and central Bahamas and along the southeastern US coast over the next few days.Yesterday, people who slept uncovered in muddy streets and near piles of rubble in Gonaives’ Place d’Armes, the central square, woke to wails and another morning without breaking their fast.”Woy!” The traditional shriek of mourning cut through the air.Carcasses of pigs, goats and dogs still floated in muddy waters slowly receding from the streets in Gonaives, Haiti’s third-largest city with some 250 000 people.Not a house escaped damage.The homeless sloshed through the streets carrying belongings on their heads, while people with houses that still had roofs tried to dry scavenged clothes.Flies buzzed around bloated corpses piled high at the city’s three morgues.The electricity was off, and the stench of death hung over the city.Relatives waited outside a morgue set up in the flood-damaged General Hospital all day to identify and bury victims.But vehicles to carry bodies to the cemetery never arrived.Most bodies remained unidentified.Destilor Aldajus, a 50-year-old farmer, said he and his six children climbed onto their roof to escape the floods.But he was at the morgue looking for his wife.- Nampa-AP