Fifty-eight people are missing feared dead after a massive landslide smashed through a tiny village deep in Mexico’s southern mountains as storms battered the country.

Rescuers yesterday were battling heavy rain as they tried to evacuate the last 45 residents of La Pintada.

The same storm that devastated Acapulco and surrounding areas over the weekend regenerated into Hurricane Manuel and was swirling into the Pacific coast again, this time further north, just offshore from the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan.

The US National Hurricane Centre said the Category 1 hurricane was expected to move inland and continue to dump rain on fishing villages. It is a third blow to a country still reeling from the one-two punch of Manuel’s first landfall and Hurricane Ingrid on Mexico’s eastern coast.

Officials raised the death toll from the passage of Manuel and Hurricane Ingrid from 60 to 80 yesterday. They said they were not including landslide victims in La Pintada, north of Acapulco, but “it’s very likely that these 58 missing people lost their lives,” said Angel Aguirre, governor of Guerrero state.

As heavy rains pelted the state of Guerrero again, tons of dirt and rocks smashed through the centre of La Pintada, burying a church and a number of two-storey homes. Federal authorities reached La Pintada by helicopter and evacuated 334 people. Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said the landslide went right through the middle of the village of some 600 people. (AP)