Caribbean storms claim hundreds

At least 358 people were killed in Haiti, while another 144 people died in the Dominican Republic, officials said Tuesday.

The two countries form the mountainous island of Hispaniola, which bore the brunt of 10 days of heavy rain storms across much of the Caribbean.

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Rescuers desperately searched for survivors in the Dominican border town of Jimani after a raging river carried away scores of sleeping women, children and men in the middle of the night. An estimated 135 people perished in Jimani.

Dominican authorities said 236 people were still missing in the floods and more than 13,000 people were left homeless after swollen rivers turned into torrents.

The Soleil River burst its banks in the early hours of Monday, sweeping away entire households.

Swollen, mud-caked bodies, many of them naked children, were piled in the local morgue as grief-stricken relatives wept, television images showed.

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

Dominican National Emergency Committee chief Radhames Lora Salcedo said that for sanitary reasons any dead that could not be quickly identified would be buried in mass graves.

Lora Salcedo said the river "wiped out the town", burying people or sweeping them away as they slept.

"The bodies of 23 women, 10 men, 26 girls and 17 boys are in the morgue at Jimani hospital," said the establishment's director, Francis Moquete.