The UN special envoy to Haiti says the country has been overwhelmed by the effects of recent storms.
Hedi Annabi said the scale of the disaster was beyond what the UN and Haitian authorities could deal with and more international help was needed.
He said Flood drama in Haitian city ...
Deadly Hanna batters Haitian city ... the western city of Gonaives was all but destroyed and every house had been damaged or swamped by mud.
He suggested Haiti's gross domestic product had fallen by between 3-4% because of the storms.
Haiti was hit in the space of a month by tropical storms Fay and Hanna and hurricanes Gustav and Ike, leaving about 550 people dead.
Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis has said that up to one million Haitians may be homeless.
Plea for donors
"This is a humanitarian catastrophe of a scale that is beyond the capacity of the government, [or] of the UN stabilisation mission here," said Mr Annabi.
"It requires an exceptional effort from bilateral donors, from those countries in the region, or beyond, that have the kind of assets that are required to deal with such an emergency."
Mr Annabi said Gonaives was completely flooded.
"There is not a single house that has not been destroyed or damaged, that is not full of two or three feet of mud," he said.
"It is just an horrendous sight. This is a city which is basically destroyed."
UN officials say the World Food Program has distributed food to more than 230,000 people in Gonaives.
But about 800,000 people are in dire need of help, it says.
"The people have lost everything in the floods and the cleaning and the reconstruction work will be enormous and very costly," Mr Annabi said.
He said that storm damage in the agricultural sector alone amounted to more than $200m (Ј111m), according to an incomplete assessment.
Earlier this month the UN launched an appeal for $108m (Ј60m) to help the storm-battered nation. Many of Haiti's nearly nine million population live on less than $2 a day.
(BBC)
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