The new toll was published in a report by the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM). It updated the previous tally of 11,435 dead given by Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei last month.

Mattei's count had covered only the period of the heatwave -- the first two weeks of August -- whereas INSERM's figure went to August 20, the date on which the number of deaths dropped back down to statistically normal levels.

The report was expected to intensify scrutiny of the government's handling of the heatwave, which was seen as tardy and inept.

Despite increasingly strident warnings from hospital doctors as bodies piled up, the government only implemented a countrywide emergency plan after the heatwave had all but passed.

France has been shocked by the soaring toll given by officials, who initially declined to give numbers but eventually put forward estimates of 3,000, then 5,000, then 10,000 before finally arriving at the total of 14,802 given on Thursday.

With his centre-right government on the spot, President Jacques Chirac has vowed a thorough review of the health system to fix "shortcomings".

But he, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Mattei have all also sought to place some of the blame on a breakdown on society, claiming France's elderly are being increasingly abandoned by their families.

The INSERM report, which came out 10 days before the start of a commission of inquiry into the state's reaction to the heatwave, showed that women, particularly elderly women, suffered the worst when the temperature repeatedly rose above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

It said over half of all victims died in their own houses or in retirement homes.

The population in and around Paris saw the number of dead soar by more than double the normal, putting it at the epicentre of the disaster. The average fatality rate across the country rose by 60 percent.

Many of the additional deaths were "directly linked to the heat", with dehydration, heat stroke and hyperthermia accounting for 29 percent of cases, followed by cardio-vascular ailments and then respiratory diseases.

The "major and brutal increase" in the August death rate "was synchronous with the period of the heatwave", which itself was exceptional for its intensity, duration and geographical extent, the report said.

Its authors -- Denis Hemon, the head of an environmental and health epidemiology unit, and Eric Jougla, the director of a centre of epidemiology on medical causes of death -- said they drew on data from their own services, the national statistics institute INSEE, the health ministry's health surveillance institute and the national weather service.

TERRA.WIRE