A massive landslide tore down the side of a mountain and buried a northern Guatemalan highway, killing at least 34 people and leaving rescue workers to dig for more victims.
A massive landslide tore down the side of a mountain and buried a northern Guatemalan highway, killing at least 34 people and leaving rescue workers to dig for more victims.
Guatemala's Vice-President Rafael Espada said he feared the death toll could rise by at least a dozen more. At least 15 others were injured.
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Authorities still do not know how many people were in the area when the landslide came thundering down Sunday, burying more than a kilometer of highway near the village of Aquil Grande.
Mayor Leopoldo Ical, of the nearby municipality of San Cristobal Verapaz, said at least 100 people were walking in the area at the time.u00a0
Many of the victims were laborers from nearby communities who worked in the surrounding coffee plantations, Ical said.
"We are very dismayed by this tragedy," Ical said. "The landslide is so big, we don't have much hope of recovering many more bodies."
Dozens of families watched anxiously as 165 rescuers dug through the collapsed mountainside, as rocks and dirt continued raining down on the crews.u00a0
Rescuers lined up the dead on cots on the ground as onlookers tried to identify the victims. Road work along the highway could have triggered the slide, said Angel Estrada, the head of the rescue effort.
Two people were killed in a landslide along the same road two weeks ago, and the highway had been blocked since.
But scores of people walked around the barricaded stretch to reach buses that would carry workers to the coffee plantations, Ical said.
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