The number of people killed in Haiti by Hurricane Matthew has risen sharply, with coastal villages and towns beginning to make contact with the outside world, three days after being hit by the fiercest Caribbean storm in nearly a decade.
A Reuters news agency tally of deaths reported by civil protection officials at a local level on Friday showed the storm killed at least 877 people.
Rural clinics overflowed with patients whose wounds including broken bones had not been treated since the storm hit on Tuesday.
Food was scarce, and at least seven people died of cholera, likely because of flood water mixing with sewage.
Bodies started to appear late on Thursday as waters receded in some places after Matthew's 235km per hour (kph) winds smashed concrete walls, flattened palm trees and tore roofs off homes, forcing thousands of Haitians to flee.
With casualty numbers quickly increasing, different government agencies and committees gave contrasting death tolls on Friday as the storm hit the US state of Florida and began rolling up the east coast.
Most of the fatalities were in towns and fishing villages around the western end of Tiburon peninsula in Haiti's southwest, with many victims killed by falling trees, flying debris and swollen rivers.
At least 50 people were reported to have died in coastal Roche-a-Bateau, which local officials described as "devastated".
"I've never seen anything like this," Louis Paul Raphael, a central government representative in Roche-a-Bateau, told Reuters.
Inland in Chantal, the toll rose to 90 late on Thursday evening, the town's mayor said.
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