In Haiti the official death toll rose to 375, while in the Dominican Republic it stood at 300 with 375 missing.

The worst hit have been the Dominican town of Jimani and the Haitian town of Fonds Verettes, both close to the border dividing the island of Hispanola shared by the two countries.

The island is at the eye of a fierce tropical storm that has been lashing the Caribbean the past 10 days.

Jimani was devastated after the rain-swelled Soleil River burst its banks and swept hundreds of people, many of them women and children, from their homes, as thousands were evacuated.

Jose Luis German, spokesman for the Dominican National Emergency Commission, said 300 were confirmed dead in Jimani, 120 were injured and 375 missing, with the death toll rising steadily.

Fonds Verettes, an agricultural town of 45,000 built on a dry riverbed northeast of Port-au-Prince, reported 158 dead, along with 546 houses destroyed and over 3,000 heavily damaged.

The two towns accounted for the major part of the official death toll.

Felix Dotel, a doctor with the local Jimani health department, told AFP up to 1,000 may have died in the town because the local authorities did not have an accurate register of the population.

The torrential rain showed no signs of abating Wednesday as rescuers dug through the mud and local authorities buried many of the dead in mass graves. Over 100 unidentified bodies were buried in a grave in a forest outside Jimani on Tuesday.

Authorities said nearly 30,000 people had been evacuated from their homes in the Dominican Republic.

The US State Department said the US Agency for International Development had provided 50,000 dollars in aid and that the agency's advisors were conducting on-scene assessments for further aid.

In New York, whose Dominican community numbers some 400,000, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said a team of disaster management specialists would go to the island early Thursday "to conduct an assessment of what is needed in the aftermath of the deadly floods.

"The team...will look at areas of health and human services, infrastructure, sanitation and mass casualty care, and make a recommendation...as to what we can do to help the people of the Dominican Republic and Haiti," said Bloomberg.

Inhabitants of the two countries meanwhile told miraculous survival tales as the Soleil turned into a torrent in the early hours of Monday morning.

Bartolina Diaz, 65, said she clung to an iron door on her house that the waters could not drag away.

Dionisio Mendez, 86, who is blind, was swept a kilometer (0.6 mile) downstream before he managed to grab a tree.

In Haiti, members of the multi-national force brought in to assure security after deposed president Jean Baptiste Aristide resigned and fled at the end of February were trying to get emergency supplies to the worst-hit areas.

United Nations and other aid workers were trying to reach hard-hit areas.

Multi-national force helicopters were ferrying food, water and emergency medical supplies.

In southeastern Haiti, Grand Gosier and Mapou Belle Anse were also hard hit by flooding, with around 100 people killed in each town.

TERRA.WIRE