110 killed, 1 mln affected by L. America rainstorm
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Xinhua, October 20, 2011
The torrential rains in the past week in Mexico and Central America have killed 110 people and affected some 1 million by Wednesday.
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The torrential rains in the past week in Mexico and Central America have killed 110 people and affected some 1 million. |
In Mexico, the number of fatalities rose to 10, while 180,000 people were affected by Hurricane Jova last week.
Guatemala has 36 confirmed deaths. It retrieved on Wednesday two more bodies from massive mudslides caused by the torrential rains and said another seven nationals are still missing, while 26,110 people have been evacuated.
The country's Disaster Prevention Authority (Conred) said about half a million people were affected by the rains.
Costa Rican Red Cross reported four new deaths and said about 12,000 people have been affected.
The death toll in Nicaragua rose to 13 after five more people were drowned while trying to cross raging rivers.
In Honduras, the death toll increased by one to 15, and the number of the affected stood at almost 70,000. A total of 11,297 people have been evacuated.
El Salvador's death toll remained unchanged at 32. The country's National Service of Territorial Studies recorded 1,256 millimeters of rainfall from Oct. 10-17, three times more than that for the whole month of October and almost 50 percent more than this time in 1998, when Hurricane Mitch killed over 10,000 in Central America.
In the past week, two hurricanes and three tropical storms hit the region, causing rains, mudslides and massive flooding and forcing about 100,000 people to evacuate.
Presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua all held daily press briefings and visited some of the worst affected areas of their countries.
All the four poor Central American countries have declared a national state of emergency to cope with the massive damage and deal with the intense hurricane season this year, which has left hundreds of people dead across the region.
Meanwhile, the United Nations World Food Program has started to distribute emergency food rations in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras, with the arrival of humanitarian aid from a number of countries including Germany, Japan, Brazil, Venezuela and the United States.
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