Storm kills more than 100 in Central America

A violent storm that battered Central America over the weekend killed more than 100 people and left a swath of destruction, officials said yesterday.

Tropical Storm Agatha, the first in a season of tempests that annually strikes the region, was especially brutal in Guatemala, where mudslides proved deadly.

"The storm has caused 82 deaths," Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom told reporters. Among the dead were four children in a house that was swept away in a landslide, officials said.

According to authorities, the toll across the region yesterday stood at 105, counting the 82 in Guatemala, 14 in Honduras and nine in El Salvador.

Tens of thousands of people were in shelters, either because their homes had been destroyed or they were evacuated from the path of possible flooding.

International aid was beginning to step up.

France said yesterday it was sending humanitarian supplies, and issued a statement expressing its "condolences" to the affected countries.

Colombia and the United States offered to send aircraft to ferry aid or help with evacuations of storm-hit areas, and Mr Colom said six US military aircraft had been deployed from a base in Honduras.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, at Mr Colom's behest, offered the airport in the border city of Tapachula for emergency flights in and out of Guatemala, Mr Calderon's office said.

In Guatemala, which has been under a state of emergency since Saturday, 112,000 people were forced to flee their homes at peril of floods and mudslides.

The worst storm-related disaster in Guatemala occurred in a village in Solola department where a landslide swept away 25 homes killing 15 people, with another 10 missing, according to San Antonio Palopo Mayor Andres Cumes.

To prevent an outbreak of disease, the bodies will be buried at once, Mr Cumes told reporters.

Honduras and El Salvador both declared nationwide states of emergency.

More than 8,000 people were forced to leave their homes in El Salvador, and more than 3,000 in Honduras.