With the death toll in Haiti by tropical storm Jeanne rising to about 1,500 on Sunday, deteriorated security and destroyed roads have hampered efforts to distribute aid materials.

Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue on Saturday put the death toll to at least 1,500, while another governmental official said the number was 1,650, according to local media.

The number will be increased to over 2,000 as more bodies will be found and many of the missing can be presumed dead, said an official of the civil defense agency.

About 300,000 people were left homeless by Jeanne with about 1,100 missing and 2,600 injured, said the official.

But deteriorated security and destroyed roads have hampered efforts to distribute aid materials.

There have been several incidents of looting aid materials in Gonaives, the country's third largest city and one of the hardest hit areas by Jeanne.

The Brazil-led UN peacekeeping force beefed up security in the city for better escorting aid materials' transportation and distribution.

Some 140 Uruguayan soldiers are on the way to reinforce the UN peacekeeping force, said Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, a spokesman for the UN mission in Haiti.

While Anne Poulsen, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program (WFP), said her agency works 24 hours a day to distribute aid food and 120 tons of food has been distributed in the past three days.

Some areas north of Gonaives are isolated by washed away roads, and "we unloaded the food from trucks and put it onto donkeys and mules to reach localities," she said.

Grave fears were felt by health workers that epidemic may occur because a lot of human bodies and animal carcasses left unburied, overflowing sewage has brought contamination, and potable water and medical materials are in great need.

Aid workers feared waterborne disease, especially malaria and tetanus, may erupt, an official of the UN Children's Fund said.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with a population of 8 million, suffered a three-week civil tumult in February, in which about 300 were dead and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted.

In May, floods caused by rainstorms killed more than 3,000 people along the border shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Source: Xinhua