Central America flooding toll jumps after mudslide

SANTIAGO ATITLAN, Guatemala - Rescue teams have pulled 64 bodies from a mudslide that swept over a Guatemalan village.

It is the worst single tragedy caused by flooding that killed more than 240 people in Central America and southern Mexico.

Hundreds of homes in the Maya Indian lakeside town of Santiago Atitlan were swallowed up when a hillside collapsed under heavy rains earlier this week.

Outside emergency teams only reached the town today and locals said they feared hundreds could have perished.

"There are no words for this. I have only tears left," said teacher Manuel Gonzalez, whose school was destroyed.

Where a bustling town had once stood, now the tops of lampposts and trees poked through a river of mud that had flowed down the slopes of a volcano.

"There were only houses here, for as far as you could see. ... It makes you lose hope," said Gonzalez, his voice cracking. "There are no children left, there are no people left."

Some families were awakened in the middle of the night by rumblings from the volcano's slopes and managed to escape, but others were buried alive when a wall of mud crushed their homes a few hours later.

"If somebody had told us to leave, maybe the people would have got out. But they said nothing. Nothing," screamed Marta Tzoc, who grabbed her five children from their home and fled in time.

With the area cut off from the outside world, it took rescuers three days to get here, hacking their way through debris from landslides as more earth tumbled from sodden mountainsides.

With the new deaths at Santiago Atitlan, there are about 150 dead in Guatemala. Sixty-seven people were killed in neighbouring El Salvador, 15 in Mexico, 10 in Nicaragua and four in Honduras.

Across the region, mud-coated bodies piled up in morgues while survivors sobbed and said they needed food and water. Many did not know what had happened to relatives and were desperate for news.

Parts of Guatemala's jagged western highlands dissolved under relentless rain, and vast tracts of low-lying agricultural land became seas of chocolate coloured water.

Across Central America and southern Mexico, relentless downpours have prevented troops from getting drinking water and medicine to remote villages.

Though Hurricane Stan fizzled out after hitting Mexico early this week, rain is forecast to continue into the weekend.

Central America is particularly vulnerable to rain because so many people live in precarious improvised dwellings dangerously close to river beds and on mountainsides.

- REUTERS