The death toll in Haiti from floods and landslides caused by more than a week of torrential rain rose Wednesday to 375 people, civil protection officials said. At least 546 homes were destroyed and some 3,000 people left homeless, they said.

The two countries lie on the mountainous island of Hispaniola, which bore the brunt of 10 days of heavy rain storms that lashed much of the Caribbean.

In Santo Domingo, authorities had more grim news as the death toll continued to rise, with most killed in the southwestern riverside town of Jimani, which was all but wiped off the map when the Soleil River burst its banks Monday.

Flooding in the Dominican Republic has claimed more than 200 lives, the National Emergency Commission said Wednesday, according to preliminary data.

Radhames Lora Salcedo, president of the commission, said that "we have counted, so far, 195 bodies of men, women and children" in Jimani, on the Haitian border in Independencia province.

There were nine additional fatalities elsewhere in the Caribbean nation, he said, which raised the toll to at least 204 dead.

Lora Salcedo told national television late Tuesday there were still more than 200 people missing and 122 injured.

"The number of dead is going up every minute," he lamented, as mud-caked, naked bodies were stacked in the Jimani morgue and grief-stricken relatives tried to identify lost loved ones, television images showed.

Earlier, Lora Salcedo said that for sanitary reasons any dead who could not be quickly identified would be buried in mass graves. He said the river "wiped out the town," burying people or sweeping them away as they slept.

Dorka Dotel lost her four children. "This is a terrible blow, terrible. They are all gone," she wept.

The floods left large parts of the Dominican Republic without electricity as power stations were damaged. Roads and crops were also devastated.

At least 300 of the Haitian victims died in the border area with the Dominican Republic, the Haitian civil protection agency said.

Flash floods in Fonds Verette, northeast of the Haitian capital, killed at least 158 more people. The agricultural town of 45,000 is built on a dried riverbed.

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

Haitian President Boniface Alexandre, Prime Minister Gerard Latortue and members of the international stabilization force in Haiti flew over Fonds Verette by helicopter on Tuesday to survey the damage.

Meanwhile, in Fort-de-France, Martinique, about 15 rescue workers were due to search Wednesday for the bodies of Nelly Chinan and her companion. The couple and a relative were swept away in flooding there last week.

TERRA.WIRE