89 dead as torrential rains hit Central America

At least 89 people had been killed and some 350,000 affected by Sunday as a week of devastating torrential rain continued in Mexico and Central America. Days of non-stop rains provoked a wave of mudslides in the region. Presidents from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have called states of emergency. "In the last 24 hours, 24 more people have died and the number of fatal victims is now 32," El Salvador's President Mauricio Funes said in a statement, adding that more than 20,000 people had been evacuated to shelters. While declaring a state of emergency in the southern part of the country, Honduras' President Porfirio Lobo appealed for "solidarity" among all Hondurans to extend a helping hand to those suffering. Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom told a press conference at the National Disaster Reduction Coordination Office (Conred): "We have decided to declare a state of public calamity for the entire country before the magnitude of the disaster happens." Latest Conred figures showed the death toll in Guatemala rose to 28 after five more bodies were retrieved from mudslides. Meanwhile, according to the Universal paper, the death toll in Mexico rose to nine. Three more deaths in Honduras took the death toll there to 13, while Nicaragua's death toll remained unchanged at seven. Official figures show at least 350,000 people have been affected across the region, including 132,700 in Mexico, 65,000 in El Salvador, 30,000 in Honduras, 12,000 in Nicaragua, 10,000 in Costa Rica and 800 in Panama. According to weather forecasts, intense rain is expected to continue for at least another 24 hours across southern Mexico and Central America, and could extend to as far as Cuba, Jamaica and nearby islands in the Caribbean. Mass evacuations continued and civil protection authorities had by Sunday evening brought over 45,300 people to safety from the rains, mudslides and flooding caused by Hurricane Jova, Hurricane Irwin and three other tropical storms in the last week. Some 6,913 were reportedly moved to shelters in Guatemala, while 8,995 were evacuated in Nicaragua, 7,057 in Honduras, 2,100 in Mexico and 225 in Costa Rica. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Venezuela had offered humanitarian help to the affected countries, while instructing his government to prepare emergency shipments of food, clean water, medicines, clothing and plastic sheets for temporary shelters. "We have to offer them a helping hand," Chavez told official Venezuelan television.