Fri, Sep 24, 2004 page7

• Toll from tropical storm passes 1,000, still rising

  DESTRUCTION In Haiti, the official death toll from the aftermath of Tropical Storm Jeanne soared to 1,070 as scores of identified bodies were buried in mass graves

  • AP
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  Haiti's official death toll from Tropical Storm Jeanne soared to more than 1,070 and could rise to 2,000, officials announced as aid workers 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 4m deep hole at sunset on Wednesday. Dozens of bystanders shrieked, held noses against the stench and demanded officials collect bodies in nearby waterlogged fields.

  The confirmed death toll rose to 1,072 bodies recovered -- 1,013 in Gonaives alone -- according to 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 dozen bodies have been identified, and nobody was taking count as the site of the mass grave.

  "We're demanding they come and take the bodies from our fields. Dogs are eating them," said bystander Jean Lebrun, listing demands made by residents of in the neighborhood 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 this city of 250,000, with parts still knee-deep in water five days after the storm's passage.

  Hurricane experts said Wednesday that Jeanne -- now over the open Atlantic as a hurricane -- could loop around and head toward the Bahamas then threaten the storm-weary southeastern US as early as this weekend.

  It was too soon to tell where or if Jeanne would hit, but the US National Hurricane Center in Miami warned people in the northwest and central Bahamas and southeastern 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 percent 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 3 meters high.

  The disaster follows devastating floods in May, along the Haiti-Dominican Republic border, which left official tolls of 1,191 dead and 1,484 missing in Haiti and 395 dead and 274 missing on the Dominican side. The countries share the island of Hispaniola.

  Survivors in Haiti's third largest city were hungry, thirsty, and increasingly desperate. UN peacekeepers fired into the air on Wednesday to keep a crowd at bay as aid workers handed out loaves of bread -- the first food in days for some.

  Aid agencies have dry food stocked in Gonaives, but few have the means to cook. Food for the Poor, based in Deerfield, Florida, said its truckloads of relief were unable to reach Gonaives on Wednesday because roads were washed away and blocked by mudslides. Troops from the Brazilian-led UN peacekeeping forcing were ferrying in some supplies by helicopter.

  "The situation is not getting better because people have been without food or water for three or four days," said Hans Havik, of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

  Lebrun said people were angry that officials were not helping them search for the missing. Rescue workers said Wednesday they were concentrating on getting in food and taking care of growing piles of bodies outside three morgues.

  Deslorges said there still were dozens of unrecovered bodies.

  "There are bodies in the water, in the mud, in collapsed houses and floating in houses that were absolutely covered by the floods,'' Deslorges said.

  At the grave in Gonaives, Raoul Elysee of the Haitian Red Cross said between 100 and 200 were buried and the rest were buried yesterday.

  The decomposing bodies have officials fearful of health risks. Havik said the contamination of water sources and flooding of latrines could cause an outbreak of waterborne diseases.

  Martine Vice-Aimee, an 18-year-old mother of two whose home was destroyed, said people already were getting ill.

  "People are getting sick from the water, they're walking in it, their skin is getting itchy and rashes. The water they're drinking is giving them stomach aches," she said. She stood in a long line but didn't know what she was waiting for outside Gonaives' Roman Catholic cathedral, where hours earlier aid workers had handed out the bread. She said she had been afraid to fight her way through the crowd.
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