TITANYEN, Haiti — Haitian President Rene Preval said today his government has buried 270,000 bodies since the Jan. 12 earthquake — many more than the 2004 Asian tsunami killed in a dozen nations — but it remains unclear who's doing the counting.

The new death toll, which Preval's office said he announced at a meeting with South American presidents in Ecuador, is 40,000 higher than one released by Preval's communications minister the previous day, even though a gravedigger at the mass graves just north of Port-au-Prince said only two bodies have been buried there this week.

Haitian officials offered no convincing explanation for how they are compiling the official death toll — which has climbed from a precise 111,481 on Jan. 23 to 150,000 on Jan. 24, to 212,000 on Saturday, to 230,000 on Tuesday and 270,000 today — and even some government officials express skepticism that the number is real.

"I personally think that a lot of information being given to the public by the government is estimates," said Haiti's chief epidemiologist, Dr. Roc Magloire.

Many citizens are even more cynical, accusing the government of inflating the numbers to attract foreign aid and to take the spotlight off its own lackluster response to the disaster.