PORT-AU-PRINCE : More than 600 people have died in massive floods that raged across northern Haiti after Tropical Storm Jeanne hit the Caribbean nation over the weekend, a UN spokesman said on Monday, while 18 people were killed in other Caribbean islands.
Another 56 people were killed in Port de Paix, 18 in Chansolme, 14 in Gros-Morne, nine in Pilate and eight in Ennery, officials said. The towns are located in the north and northwest.
Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, who declared three days of national mourning, flew over a flooded area by helicopter on Sunday, describing it as a "vast sea".
"There is not one house in the city of Gonaives that is not flooded," Latortue said, adding that 80 percent of the population there, or 80,000 people, needs food.
Meanwhile, authorities were without news from the country's second largest island, La Tortue. MINUSTAH officials could not find the island of 26,000 people while flying over the region by helicopter on Sunday.
The UN mission resumed its emergency helicopter flights carrying food and medicine to Gonaives, Kongo-Doudou said earlier.
"All humanitarian agencies have mobilised to assist in the devastated regions," including medical teams dispatched by the United Nations and Doctors Without Borders, he said.
One tonne of medicine will be airlifted to Gonaives, while the UN's World Food Programme will send convoys of food and water to the city about 110 kilometres north of the capital, Kongo-Doudou said.
Haitian authorities have declared the entire flood zone a disaster area, after Jeanne drenched the island of Hispaniola on Friday and Saturday, leaving 80 percent of Gonaives under water.
In neighboring Dominican Republic, at least seven deaths were blamed on Jeanne.
Storms in May left at least 1,500 dead when floods swept through the border area between the two countries.
Jeanne also left nine dead in the Bahamas and two in Puerto Rico.
The storm is currently churning over the Caribbean north of the Bahamas and expected to stay out to sea for the next few days. It was just the latest in a string of deadly storms to slam the Americas.
Hurricane Ivan, responsible for more than 100 deaths in the United States and Caribbean, finally petered out over the weekend but countries in the region were still reeling from the destruction left in its wake.
Thousands of homes were flattened by the third major hurricane to hit the southern United States in six weeks.
Insurance experts have estimated the cost at up to 10 billion dollars, making it one of the most expensive in US history.
US President George W. Bush has declared Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and North Carolina disaster areas because of the damage left by Ivan, and declared another disaster in Puerto Rico because of Jeanne.
Bush visited Pensacola, Florida, on Sunday, his third visit in six weeks to tour parts of the state hit by hurricanes, after Charley and Frances also ripped through.
Ivan first menaced the Caribbean island of Tobago on September 7 before pounding Grenada, Barbados, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba, and the Cayman Islands, leaving 70 dead.
Grenada alone suffered 37 deaths when Ivan pummeled it September 8.
On Thursday, the monster storm slammed into the US Gulf Coast, packing winds of up to 215 kilometres per hour, wrecking houses and buildings and causing widespread flooding.
Ivan spawned tornadoes and left floods in its wake, killing at least 38 people across a massive swath of the country from Louisiana on the Gulf Coast to Maryland, a small mid-Atlantic state adjacent to the US capital, to Connecticut, north of New York. - AFP
