The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Port-Au-Prince

Haitian police found 495 corpses when muddy floodwaters began to recede on Friday from the port city of Gonaives following days of heavy rain from Tropical Storm Hanna, the town's police commissioner said on Friday.

"The weather is calm now and we are discovering more bodies. We have found 495 bodies so far and there are 13 people missing," commissioner Ernst Dorfeuille told Reuters.

"The smell of the dead is very unpleasant in Gonaives. The death toll could be even higher."

Meanwhile, Receding waters in the starving Haitian city of Gonaives revealed the bodies of more victims in floods from Tropical Storm Hanna, as U.N. peacekeepers and aid groups struggled to feed thousands of people.

Officials feared fatalities in Haiti from Hanna could rise above the 163 confirmed dead, but said reports of higher death tolls were based on unconfirmed estimates.

Flooded roads, broken piers and mass cell phone outages impeded efforts Friday to get food to about 2,000 hungry people, even as Hurricane Ike threatened to trigger more deadly floods across the water-logged city this weekend.