Hope fades in Guatemala as hundreds still trapped in mudslide

GUATEMALA CITY, Monday (AFP) A mayor asked that a river of mud that buried two Guatemalan towns be declared a mass grave for the thousands of people underneath, four days after Tropical Storm Stan triggered mudslides there.

"This should be declared a mass grave. It is a cemetery for 1,400 persons, we calculate," Diego Mendoza, mayor of nearby Santiago Atitlan, told AFP. In the early hours of Wednesday an avalanche of rock and mud tumbled from the slopes of San Lucas volcano onto the towns of Panajab and Tzanchaj, 180 kilometers (110 miles) west of Guatemala City.Only 71 bodies have been recovered so far, mostly children. The corpses were placed in makeshift wooden coffins and quickly interred.

Ten more bodies were recovered in Guatemala Sunday, bringing the total toll from Stan in the hardest-hit country in the region to 519.

"The size of the disaster is enormous. The losses are colossal," Vice President Eduardo Stein said during an interview with Sonora radio about widespread flooding and landslides triggered by Stan since October 1. Stein said 130,000 persons were directly affected by Stan. However, he said that 3.5 million people have been affected in areas where water and electricity have been cut.

The death toll in all of Central America and Mexico from Stan's passing rose to at least 652 Sunday. In El Salvador, 71 persons died, 28 died in Mexico and 11 in Nicaragua, authorities in those countries said.

In this usually touristic region of Guatemala, rescuers - armed only with shovels, picks and hoes to dig out the dead - began showing signs of fatigue, as there was little food and drinking water in the devastated Lake Atitlan area.

Rain fell across the country complicating the recovery efforts as helicopters were unable to fly over devastated areas, officials said.

Stan slammed ashore as a hurricane in the Mexican state of Veracruz early Tuesday but began pounding northern Central America with rain on October 1, with Guatemala taking the hardest blow.Guatemalan President Oscar Berger has made an impassioned plea for international assistance, estimating agricultural losses at 135 million dollars.

But he did not hold out much hope for his compatriots.

"I believe we are in for more unpleasant surprises," Berger said. "Many people remain missing. There have been many mudslides, and many communities remain cut off."

Infrastructure and housing minister Eduardo Castillo said more than half of Guatemala's 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles) of rural roads had been damaged.