Guatemala City: About 150 people have died or remain unaccounted for in Guatemala due to mudslides caused by powerful storm Eta, which devastated an indigenous village in the country’s north, President Alejandro Giammattei said Friday.
The toll is in addition to the approximately two dozen people who died elsewhere in Central America since Eta made landfall in Nicaragua on Tuesday as a hurricane.
Giammattei said an army unit had arrived in the northern village of Queja to begin rescue efforts, amid fears that most of the residents had been killed.
A preliminary report indicated that “150 homes have been buried with 100 people dead,” he said.
Giammattei added that another mudslide in the northeastern department of Huehuetenango, on the border with Mexico, had left 10 dead.
“We calculate that between the dead and the missing, unofficial figures show about 150 dead,” said Giammattei, updating the country’s death toll from the 50 fatalities he had reported on Thursday.
He called the situation in Queja critical, with heavy rain continuing to fall and setting off new mudslides, while roads are still blocked.
Eta tore through Central America, leaving death and destruction in its wake since it first rocked Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane.
Two days later it exited Honduras as a tropical depression, although forecasters warned it could again strengthen into a tropical storm as it heads towards Cuba.