The official death toll from Tropical Storm Jeanne soared to more than 1,070 and could rise to 2,000, Haitian officials announced as aid workers started mass burials in Gonaives.

There was no time for funeral services for the victims on Wednesday, as horrified bystanders demanded officials collect more bodies from nearby fields.

The confirmed death toll rose to 1,072 bodies recovered 1,013 in Gonaives alone according to Dieufort Deslorges, spokesman for the government's civil protection agency.

He said the number of people missing in the floods rose to 1,250.

Only a couple dozen bodies have been identified, and no one took count at the mass grave site.

"We're demanding they come and take the bodies from our fields," said bystander Jean Lebrun, listing demands made by residents in the neighborhood whose opposition to mass graves delayed burials.

"We can only drink the water people died in," the 35-year-old farmer said, listing a widespread demand for potable water in the city of 250,000, with parts still knee-deep in water five days after the storm's passage.

Hurricane experts said on Wednesday that Jeanne now over the open Atlantic as a hurricane could loop around and head toward the Bahamas and then threaten the storm-weary southeastern United States as early as this weekend.

It was too soon to tell where or if Jeanne would hit, but the US National Hurricane Center in Miami warned people in the northwest and central Bahamas and southeastern US coast to beware of dangerous surf kicked up by Jeanne in coming days.

(China Daily September 24, 2004)