Haiti flood toll tops 300 from Jeanne

More than 300 people died in Haiti from flooding and mudslides triggered by Tropical Storm Jeanne, according to aid workers who said half of the northern city of Gonaives was still underwater.

UN peacekeepers had unconfirmed reports of another 150 dead in Gonaives, said UN coordinator Adama Guindo.

Forty-seven people were also confirmed killed in the northwest province, around the town of Port-de-Paix, said Henry Max Thelus, a government official. Eight deaths were recorded elsewhere, bringing the total confirmed toll to 305.

Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue declared three days of national mourning.

Half of Gonaives remained under water, and 80 per cent of its inner urban population of over 100,000 had been affected by the floods, which at one point forced hundreds of people to take cover on the roofs of their homes, said Anne Poulsen, spokeswoman for the UN's World Food Programme in Haiti.

The World Health Organisation planned to deliver medicine, and 15 trucks from the Brazilian-led UN force had gone to reinforce a detachment of Argentine peacekeepers stationed in the city.

Jeanne, which last Thursday briefly became a hurricane with winds in excess of 122 kph, also killed 11 people in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and two in the US territory of Puerto Rico.

The latest cyclone in an unusually busy Atlantic hurricane season, the storm was moving slowly northward to the east of the Bahamas at 11 a.m. (1500 GMT) yesterday, with maximum sustained winds of 100 kph.

It presented no immediate threat to land, the US National Hurricane Centre said, and was expected to swing to the northeast. That would spare Florida, hit by three big hurricanes in the past five weeks.

Likewise, powerful Hurricane Karl presented no immediate threat to land as it swirled in the open Atlantic, 1,620 km east-northeast of the Lesser Antilles, with winds of 195 kph.

Meanwhile, a new tropical storm formed in the Atlantic yesterday. Tropical Storm Lisa was 1,305 km west of the Cape Verde islands by 11 a.m., with 95 kph as it began to take a westerly track that would move it through the Caribbean toward the Gulf of Mexico.