"If you work for human rights, give us food, we are hungry," shouted one voice inside the jail in the stricken Haitian city of Gonaives where four major storms in four weeks have killed hundreds of people.

The prisoners ate "the day before yesterday," according to Adeleth Adelson, the chief at the police station. In a city with 250,000 stricken inhabitants permanently wading in muddy water up to their knees, many without food and water, some may say the prisoners were not the worst off.

Haiti has endured tropical storms Fay and Hanna, and hurricanes Gustav and Ike, in less than a month. Hanna's direct hit on Gonaives last week was the terrifying peak of the suffering.

Pakistani soldiers from the UN peacekeeping force sat at the doors of the jail and on the roof, standing guard, as the prisoners were allowed to tell their stories.

"We are dying of hunger. There is no water. We have not washed for a month," said one young detainee, Wilbert. "It stinks in here, you can smell it. We are all going to be sick."

There are pools of urine and piles of feces in the corner of the cells. There is a deadly stench in the air.

The police guide said that the sceptic pit had overflowed because of the hurricane floods and that waste had flowed into the cells.

According to humanitarian sources, two inmates at the Gonaives jail have died from tuberculosis since Hanna passed through.

Inmates told how they watched the water dangerously rise in their cells on the night of the storm, September 1. "They did not want to let us out, but we forced the bars with our hands and arms and climbed up on the roofs," said one of the 220 inmates.

The police say they did let the prisoners out.

"It is not easy," said the town's chief of police, Ernst Dorfeuille, who said the 50 police in Gonaives had been besieged by the disaster.

"Normally this is not meant to be a prison, just a centre for interim detentions," Dorfeuille told AFP. "This problem has been going on for four years."

In 2004, when there was a popular uprising against Haiti's President Jean Bertrand Aristide, Gonaives' prison was burned down.

Toussenel Chery, a member of the human rights team for the UN force in Haiti, MINUSTAH, said all the detainees in the police jail should be freed because of the crisis the city is going through.

"I think anyone who has gone through this has already served a heavy sentence," said Chery.

Even outside the police station the situation is desperate. Dozens of homeless and lost people are waiting in the muddy square for a chance to be able to sleep in the police station.

In streets across the centre of Gonaives, each day scores of people fight through the sludge looking for a place where they can spend the night.

Across Haiti, more than 600 people have died in the storms.

Bridges have been swept away so relief supplies have not been able to get through to the worst hit towns like Gonaives, where in places the water is still more than a metre (3.3 feet) deep.

And through this one pregnant woman walked, following the carcass of a cow floating in the filthy liquid. A couple and their children watched from the safety of a nearby roof.

Lightning erupted in the hills around Gonaives, leaving everyone to fear another night of rain, a leftover from Hurricane Ike's visit this week. Another 66 people have been reported dead from Ike and the toll rises every day.

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