Torrential rains and mudslides killed at least 35 people in Central America as collapsing hillsides buried homes and rivers burst their banks, rescue workers said today.
El Salvador was hardest hit with at least 23 people killed when the heavy rains triggered mudslides in neighborhoods south and west of the capital in the early hours of the morning.
"They are trapped in the mud that drowned them," sobbed Ana Ramos, whose niece Carmen Elena Ramos died with her husband and three children in San Marcos, just south of San Salvador.
The government declared a red alert on Monday and rushed to evacuate thousands of families.
The deaths were blamed on Tropical Storm Stan, which swept across Mexico's Yucatan peninsula over the weekend.
Three days of rains pounded Central America, sending rivers spilling over their banks, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes and finally triggering the worst mudslides.
Dozens of Salvadoran soldiers, rescue workers and volunteers tried to pull the bodies of victims from out of the mud today in the small town of Colon, west of the capital.
"Here, there are at least seven people dead. And there, about 50 meters away, another family is buried," Jose Dolores Portillo, a neighbor who escaped the mudslide, said as the rescue teams scrambled in the mud on their gruesome search.
El Salvador's biggest river, the normally calm Lempa, overflowed and rescue teams raced to evacuate families further down river. "We are going to the lower Lempa to evacuate about 3,000 families," said Eduardo Rivera, the spokesman for one of El Salvador's leading emergency rescue units.
In neighboring Guatemala, emergency officials said two people drowned inside their riverside homes when the river broke its banks, and another two were killed in a mudslide.
Civil defense officials said six bodies were washed ashore in northwestern Nicaragua, possibly illegal immigrants headed to the United States whose boat had overturned in bad weather. Mudslides also killed at least two people in Honduras, including a two-year-old boy.
Central America is regularly hit by natural disasters -- flooding, mudslides, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.
Last month, 13 people were killed when rains battered El Salvador's central region.
To add to El Salvador's troubles, its biggest volcano erupted on Saturday for the first time in a century, killing two people and forcing thousands to evacuate their homes.