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Rains and mudslides claim seven lives:
Helicopters rescue tourists from Peru’s Inca ruins
PERU: Peruvian helicopters airlifted some 600 tourists from
the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu Wednesday where hundreds remained
stranded by heavy rains and mudslides that have claimed seven lives.
“We have evacuated 600 tourists, but there are still almost 1,500 at
Machu Picchu,” Prime Minister Javier Velasquez told reporters.
About a dozen helicopters were used in the unprecedented airlift but
“the persistent rains in the Cusco region are delaying the operation,”
he added.
The railway line that transports tourists between Aguas Calientes, at
the foot of the ruins, and the city of Cusco, the ancient Inca capital,
has been damaged and the tracks remain broken.
Hundreds are still said to be stranded in Aguas Calientes with scores
more believed trapped on the Inca Trail, a narrow Andean pathway up to
Machu Picchu that takes four days to complete.
With the trail already cut in several places by landslides, there are
fears for the remaining backpackers on the trek.
“People are sleeping in the street square, they are sleeping in gyms,
in schools, on trains, in makeshift tents. People are just distressed,”
Julie Nemcich, 29, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from
Aguas Calientes.
A 23-year-old Argentine tourist and a 33-year-old Peruvian mountain
guide died on the trail, buried under mudslides, the National Culture
Institute in Cusco said.
The other fatalities occurred along the valley leading to Cusco and
in the town itself.
But Velasquez rejected accusations that the government was giving
priority to foreign tourists and that some were bribing their way out.
He said people over 60, children and the sick were the first to be
evacuated.
The Peruvian government has also sent food aid to the 8,000 residents
of Aguas Calientes, cut off by landslides and swollen rivers.
Officials defended the slow pace of the operations, saying they were
being hampered by the heaviest rains in 15 years. “No one’s life is in
danger,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Jose Antonio Garcia Belaunde,
adding all tourists should be evacuated by Saturday.
CUSCO, Thursday, AFP |
