Tropical storm Amanda kills 17 in El Salvador and Guatemala

The swollen Los Esclavos River flows violently under a bridge during tropical storm Amanda in Cuilapa. Photo / AP

Rains from Tropical Storm Amanda left at least 17 dead and seven missing while causing extensive damage across El Salvador and Guatemala that pushed thousands of people into shelters amid the coronavirus pandemic.

EL Salvador Interior Minister Mario Durán said Monday some 7000 people were scattered across 154 shelters. He said a quarter of the rain that the country normally receives in a year fell in 70 hours.

A man walks on a bridge over Los Esclavos river during tropical storm Amanda. Photo / AP

That set off landslides and flooding, especially in the western part of the country. A day earlier officials had said at least 900 homes had been damaged.

President Nayib Bukele visited one of the most affected communities on the outskirts of San Salvador. Some 50 families lost their homes and Bukele said the government would give them $10,000 to rebuild.

One whose home was damaged was María Torres. "We've never experienced this," she said. "The rain was so strong and suddenly the water entered the homes and we just saw how they fell."

Rain clouds hover over mountains during tropical storm Amanda in Barberena, eastern Guatemala. Photo / AP

The Legislative Assembly approved the government's use of a $389 million loan from the International Monetary Fund to deal with the pandemic and the storm's impact.

El Salvador reports more than 2500 infections and 46 deaths related to coronavirus.

In Guatemala, a 9-year-old boy was swept away by a river and drowned and another person was killed when a home collapsed, said David de León, spokesman for the national disaster agency.

Amanda pounded El Salvador with rain for days before moving ashore as a tropical storm on Sunday and pushing across Guatemala.

It quickly dissipated, but the US National Hurricane Center said Monday afternoon its remnants had formed into a tropical depression in the Bay of Campeche off Mexico's gulf coast and was expected to move through the Gulf of Mexico in coming days.

Mexico issued a tropical storm warning from Campeche west to the port of Veracruz, expecting the depression to become a tropical storm Monday night or Tuesday.

It had sustained winds of 45km/h) and was expected to move slowly just off the Mexican coast for the next couple of days. The storm is expected to dump up to 380mm of rain over the Mexican state of Tabasco and Veracruz with up to 500mm in some isolated areas.