The death toll "is going to rise," National Emergency Commission spokesman Jose Luis German told AFP.

"The river overflowed a lot, and we are just find now finding the maps to where the houses were located."

"There are 329 dead, 375 missing and 122 injured in Jimani," German said.

Hundreds of Civil Defense rescuers firefighters and the Red Cross used backhoes and shovels to remove mud atop homes and blocking entry as they looked for survivors as hopes dimmed on the fourth day after the floods.

President Hipolito Mejia and US ambassador Hans Hertell examined the devastation.

Mejia declared the town a disaster area and declared a day of national mourning.

A week of heavy rain burst the banks of the Soleil River during the early morning hours Monday as unsuspecting residents slept.

Rescuers also focused on keeping survivors alive in a town littered with rotting corpses, no clean water and where only a few houses have electricity. The rains have not stopped.

Rescue workers and international aid poured into Jimani, on the border with Haiti, where the storm killed hundreds, along the river that Dominicans call Blanco and the Haitians call Soleil.

Residents of Jimani are digging bodies out of the mud, and if no one reclaims them, reburying them in common graves.

"We wash them, take photos of them, take DNA samples, do a forensic analysis and bury them," German said.

"If they are claimed, they get a casket."

"The problem is that entire families were lost," he said, "so there's no one to claim them."

More than 32,000 residents have moved out of Jimani. About 210 families lost their homes.

Jimani is 280 kilometers (175 miles) west of Santo Domingo, near border with Haiti. The countries share the mountainous island of Hispaniola.

The devastation was such that "even the cemetery was destroyed," German said.

TERRA.WIRE