About 110 bodies had been recovered from the Jimani area of western Dominican Republic, near the border with Haiti, and some 200 people were believed to be missing, officials there said.

In Haiti, up to 100 people were killed in the town of Fond Verettes and the surrounding countryside, and 40 more died in the southeast region of the country in the floods of the past two days, sources close to Haiti's Civil Protection Office said.

Twenty others died near the Haitian-Dominican border in the south of the country, said a spokesman for a local humanitarian organization. The island of Hispaniola, which the two countries share, has been lashed with torrential rains in recent days.

"The Solie river, whose source is in Haiti, overflowed," Dominican National Emergency Commission commissioner Radhames Lora Salcedo said.

"The river wiped out the town between 1:00 and 3:00 in the morning."

Salcedo said the death toll was preliminary.

In the capital, one person drowned and another was electrocuted, as the rains toppled electrical lines, cutting power to large parts of the population.

A Haitian man drowned in Duarte province of the Dominican Republic, 135km northwest of the capital, the commission said. Two people were reported missing.

In Haiti, 100 people were killed in Fonds Verette, northeast of Port-au-Prince, a parish priest told Radio Metropole. The toll could not be independently verified.

The downpour has caused landslides and has isolated communities.

Forecasters say the rain will continue for two more days.

"Right now there is moderate to strong precipitation, occasionally accompanied by wind gusts over a large part of the national territory," Dominican National Emergency Commission spokesman Jose Luis German said.