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Jun 1, 2010

TROPICAL STORM AGATHA
Storm kills more than 100

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Handout photo released by the Guatemalan Presidency of an aerial view of a huge crater caused by a landslide due to tropical storm Agatha, in Guatemala City. -- AFP

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GUATEMALA CITY - A VIOLENT storm that walloped Central America over the weekend killed more than 100 people and left a swath of destruction, officials said on Monday.
Tropical Storm Agatha, the first in a season of tempests that annually strikes the region, was especially brutal in Guatemala, where 92 deaths were recorded, mostly from mudslides. Another 54 people were missing.
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 Monday stood at 115, counting the 92 in Guatemala, 14 in Honduras and nine in El Salvador.
Tens of thousands of people were in shelters, either because their ramshackle homes had been destroyed or they were evacuated from the path of possible flooding. International aid was beginning to step up. Some aid organizers were turning to Facebook, Twitter and other Internet social networking sites to appeal for necessities to send to populations or authorities. France said on Monday it was sending humanitarian supplies, and issued a statement expressing its condolences to the affected countries. Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said six US military aircraft had been deployed from a base in Honduras.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon, at Colom's behest, offered the airport in the border city of Tapachula for emergency flights in and out of Guatemala, Calderon's office said. His government also expressed solidarity with Honduras, issuing a statement saying: 'Mexico's government deeply laments the damage and loss, especially of human life, caused in Honduras by Agatha.'
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. -- AFP


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