Haiti death toll from Tropical Storm Jeanne passes 700

GONAIVES, Haiti -- Blood swirled in knee-deep floodwaters as workers stacked bodies outside the hospital morgue Tuesday. Carcasses of pigs, goats and dogs and pieces of smashed furniture floated in muddy streams that once were the streets of this battered city. Desperate people swarmed a truck delivering water.

The death toll across Haiti from the weekend deluges brought by Tropical Storm Jeanne rose to more than 700, with about 600 of them in Gonaives, and officials said they expected to find more dead and estimated tens of thousands of people were homeless.

Waterlines up to 10 feet high on Gonaives' buildings marked the worst of the storm that sent water gushing down denuded hills, destroying homes and crops in the Artibonite region that is Haiti's breadbasket.

Floodwaters receded, but half of Haiti's third-largest city was still swamped with contaminated water up to two feet deep four days after Jeanne passed. Not a house in the city of 250,000 people escaped damage. The homeless sloshed through the streets carrying belongings on their heads, while people with houses that still had roofs tried to dry scavenged clothes.

"We're going to start burying people in mass graves," said Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti. Some victims were buried Monday.

More than 1,000 people were missing, said Raoul Elysee, head of the Haitian Red Cross.