FOND VERRETTES, Haiti - Health officials feared up to 1,000 people could be dead in a single Haitian town from floods that wiped out villages across Haiti and the Dominican Republic, a figure that would nearly double the death toll from the disaster.

As search crews worked to recover bodies from devastated towns and villages in the two countries that share the island of Hispaniola, U.S.-led troops delivered bread, fruit and bottled water, and international aid employees fanned out to assess the damage.

The death toll was about 950, but the number was expected to jump. In the Haitian town of Mapou, as many as 1,000 people could be dead, said Margarette Martin, the government's representative for the southeast region in nearby Jacmel. Only about 300 bodies had been counted so far, said Dr. Yvon Lavissiere, region health director.

Martin said officials believed hundreds more might have died because houses were submerged and rescuers saw bodies underwater that they were unable to retrieve.

The town of several thousand people, located 30 miles southeast of the capital of Port-au-Prince, is still isolated by mud and landslides. The town is in a valley that often floods when it rains.

In the Haitian border village of Fond Verrettes, meanwhile, U.S. and Canadian troops handed out food to hundreds of survivors who lined up seeking help.

Troops in the U.S.-led force were sent to stabilize Haiti after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ouster on Feb. 29. Since then the new interim government has struggled to provide even basic services. Left bankrupt, the government has scant resources to deal with natural disasters.

"The river took everything, there isn't anything left," said Jermanie Vulsont, a mother who said the rushing water swept away her five children in Fond Verrettes, about 35 miles southeast of Port-au-Prince.

Rushing waters and mudslides swept away most homes in Fond Verrettes, leaving it looking like a barren riverbed with stunned residents wandering about and asking troops for help.

"For a while we didn't even realize what we were standing on," said Lance Cpl. Justin Collins, 21, of Avon, Ill., one of about 20 U.S. Marines who went to help feed villagers. "We were standing on some parts of a neighborhood."

Other troops surveyed the damage in helicopters, accompanied by U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio. U.N. officials also flew in by helicopter to survey the damage.