DHAKA: The number of people killed in Haiti by Hurricane Matthew has risen sharply into the hundreds, as coastal villages and towns began making contact with the outside world two days after being hit by the fiercest Caribbean storm in nearly a decade.

Bodies started to appear late on Thursday as waters receded in some places after Matthew’s 235 kilometers-per-hour winds smashed concrete walls, flattened palm trees and tore roofs off homes, forcing thousands of Haitians to flee, reports Al Jazeera.

With the numbers increasing quickly, different government agencies and committees gave contrasting death tolls.

A Reuter’s news agency tally of deaths reported by civil protection officials at a local level on Friday showed the storm killed at least 478, updating an earlier figure of 339.

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.

Carrying extremely dangerous winds of 220km/h, Matthew pounded the northwestern part of the Bahamas as it barrelled towards the southeast US coast where millions of residents heeded warnings to flee inland.

Matthew’s top sustained winds had dropped to 209km/h by Thursday night.

But it remained a Category 4 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity as it neared Florida, where it could either plow inland or tear along the Atlantic coast through Friday night, the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center said.

Few storms with winds as powerful as Matthew's have struck Florida, and the NHC warned of “potentially disastrous impacts”.

The US National Weather Service said the storm could be the most powerful to strike northeast Florida in 118 years.

BDST: 1035 HRS, OCT 07, 2016
NJ/BD