PORT-AU-PRINCE: Haiti began three days of mourning Sunday for victims of Hurricane Matthew as relief officials grappled with the unfolding devastation in the Caribbean country’s hard-hit south. Matthew, meanwhile, lost its hurricane status, subsiding to a “post-tropical cyclone” after cutting a swath from Florida to South Carolina that left nine dead. At 1200 GMT, the storm was still packing winds that gusted to hurricane strength as it moved away from the US coastline. But attention was shifting back to Haiti, the Americas’ poorest country and one shattered by a 2010 earthquake and ravaged by a cholera epidemic. Matthew crashed ashore on Haiti’s southern coast on Tuesday as a monster Category 4 storm, packing 145 mile (230 kilometer) winds. Aerial footage from the hardest-hit towns in southern Haiti showed a ruined landscape of metal shanties with roofs blown away, downed trees everywhere and mud from overflowing rivers covering the ground. Civil defense officials put the death toll at 336, although some officials said it topped 400. Interim President Jocelerme Privert declared three days of national mourning for the dead. As the death toll climbed, pledges of aid flooded in, with the United States announcing it was sending a Navy ship, the USS Mesa Verde, whose 300 Marines will add to the 250 personnel and nine helicopters already ordered to deploy to Haiti. France announced it was sending 60 troops, with 32 tonnes of humanitarian supplies and water purification equipment. California-based charity International Relief Teams said it was donating $7 million in medical supplies with international organizations MAP International and Hope for Haiti. Meanwhile, Matthew was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone on Sunday as it struck North Carolina and Virginia with a diminished yet still potent punch, causing flooding and widespread power outages along the U.S. Atlantic coast after killing hundreds in Haiti. The most powerful Atlantic storm since 2007 unleashed torrential rains and powerful winds as it churned slowly north after pummeling the southeastern coast of the United States, killing at least 11 people in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina since Thursday and leaving more than two million businesses and homes without power. Damage in the United States, however, was much less than in Haiti, where Matthew took nearly 900 lives. At least 13 people on the Caribbean island have also died from outbreaks of cholera since the storm, and around 61,500 people were in shelters, officials said. Matthew continued to threaten coastal communities in North Carolina and Virginia, where flash flood warnings were in effect and gusts of 75 miles per hour (120 kph) were recorded. “The wind is bending the trees to a 90 degree angle in my backyard, I’ve lost electrical power in my home and the rain is blowing sideways,” Frank Gianinni, a 59-year-old occupational therapist, said in an email from his home in Wilmington, North Carolina. Forecasters said widespread flooding was possible from heavy rain – 20 inches (50 cm) was expected to fall in some areas – along with storm surges and high tides. “We are looking at very significant flooding. Almost every road in the city is impassable,” Virginia Beach spokeswoman Erin Sutton told the Weather Channel from the city of almost 500,000 people between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Media showed footage from across the region of motorists and passengers sitting and standing on vehicles stuck in rushing flood waters as crews used swift water boats to rescue the stranded.