Homes destroyed, bodies floating in the water and fears over the spread of cholera as Hurricane Matthew Hits Haiti

Hundreds of people are known to have been killed by Hurricane Matthew in Haiti but authorities are still desperately trying to reach marooned areas devastated by the Category 4 storm.

Among the victims of the deadly hurricane are at least 470 people in one district of Haiti's hard-hit southwest region, a civil defense official said Saturday.

Fridnel Kedler, coordinator for the Civil Protection Agency in Grand-Anse, said officials still have not been able to reach two communities in that department three days after the Category 4 storm hit.

'The death toll is sure to go up,' he said.

Officials are especially concerned about Grand-Anse, located on the northern tip of the southwest peninsula, where they believe the death toll and damage is highest.

When Category 4 Hurricane Flora hit Haiti in 1963, it killed as many as 8,000 people.

Haiti's overall death toll remains unknown although it is currently believed to be close to 900.

Death counts are frequently difficult to tabulate in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster in any country, though it is particularly difficult in remote and mountainous southwest Haiti.

In Jeremie, the main city of Grand-Anse, Jislene Jean-Baptiste surveyed what remained of the one-room house that the grandmother shares with her three daughters and their children.

There wasn't much left. Storm surge flowed across the road and drenched everything she owns in waist-deep salt water, washing away the stores of rice and sugar she regularly sold at the market to support her family. Then the wind tore off her roof.

'That storm was the most terrifying thing that ever happened here,' she said.