The recovery brought the death toll from flooding in the eastern town of Dire Dawa and outlying areas to at least 212, but frantic rescue efforts were continuing even as hopes faded for some 300 people still unaccounted for.

Rescue officials said search teams had managed to retrieve one more body Wednesday after 11 were recovered the previous day.

"Only one body was recovered by lunch time. The problem now is the difficulty to identify the bodies. There are a number of bodies in the hospital unclaimed till today," Red Cross programme coordinator Gebregiorgis Gebremicheal told AFP.

Police Inspector Beniam Fikru said the death toll could rise as so far it only counted deaths confirmed by the authorities. Many victims had been buried quickly by relatives rather than brought to hospitals, he said.

"This death toll is only of those who are confirmed by the hospital and the police. It does not include those who are buried by family members that were not brought to hospital," he said.

Military and civilian divers joined the search in the now-receding waters of the Dire Dawa and Dechatu rivers that burst their banks on Saturday, expanding the operation 40 kilometers (25 miles) downstream, where officials said more bodies might have been washed or buried under the sand.

"The search for more bodies is going on today, as far as 30-40 kilometres downstream and in suspect areas of the river bed," Beniam said.

In Dire Dawa, about 500 kilometers east of the capital, exhausted security forces and aid workers continued to dig through mud, sand and debris with heavy equipment, garden tools and even their bare hands in the search for bodies.

Some 10,000 people are believed to have been left homeless after the two rivers broke their banks during heavy rains and swept through the town in the flood-prone Ethiopian lowlands.

The government and humanitarian teams were struggling to deliver supplies to the displaced, who are camped in schools and other public buildings in the township.

Witnesses said crowds of people crammed into makeshift mortuaries and overwhelmed hospitals in search for missing loved ones.

Ethiopia, an impoverished nation of about 70 million people, is frequently ravaged by natural disasters, notably drought.

In the past few years, flooding has affected large areas of eastern and southern Ethiopia, displacing tens of thousands of people and causing damage running into millions of dollars, particularly to agriculture.

Last year, at least 200 people were killed and more than 260,000 displaced when heavy rains pounded the region. Large numbers of crocodiles forced survivors to cling to trees to escape being eaten.

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