The rains that have been hitting Central America for a week, causing landslides and damaging infrastructure and crops, have left at least 27 dead, mainly in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, we learned from official sources on Friday.
“Unfortunately, the death toll now stands at 19,” Salvadoran Civil Protection Director General Luis Amaya said in a television interview.
The death toll in El Salvador rose from 13 to 19 deaths between Thursday and Friday, including the deaths of two young girls whose house was buried by a landslide in Soyapango, 9 km east of San Salvador , the capital of Salvador.
Mr. Amaya called on the population to leave “very high risk” places, stressing that in several regions of El Salvador preventive evacuations were carried out on hillside homes.
In Guatemala, authorities reported seven deaths and extensive damage to roads and bridges.
In Honduras, one death was recorded among some 3,500 victims. Several isolated villages are cut off from all communication due to flooding rivers in the south of the country, near the border with El Salvador, noted an AFP journalist.
In Nicaragua, no deaths have yet been recorded but the authorities have deplored flooded houses and roads damaged by swollen rivers.
According to the Salvadoran Minister of the Environment, Fernando Lopez, the bad weather will continue until Saturday, the result of a low pressure phenomenon over the Pacific Ocean and the indirect influence of tropical storm Alberto, downgraded to a depression on Thursday tropical storm, which killed four people when it made landfall in Mexico.