Storm death toll rises beyond 200

GUATEMALA CITY -- Rescue workers in Guatemala pulled dozens of bodies from a mudslide and a swollen river yesterday, officials said, raising to at least 246 the number of people killed from five days of rains in Central America and Mexico.

Officials said they expected the death to toll to climb as they searched for more than 150 people who were still missing following the landslide in Solola, close to Lake Atitlan, 60 miles west of the capital, Guatemala City.

Along the country's Pacific coast, the Nahualate River broke from its banks, creating a new outlet to the sea and killing at least 20 people from a small, seaside village, navy officials said.

There was joy amid the tragedy. Claudio Manchinel, from Iztapa in coastal, southern Guatemala, was forced to walk for hours through rain and mud with his pregnant wife, Leticia.

Upon reaching a highway, the couple stopped an ambulance, which took them to a naval base, where a son, Claudio, was born Wednesday.

The recovery of the bodies pushed the number killed in the region to 246, including 14 victims earlier this week in Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica, and 13 victims who died in three southern Mexican states.

The current death toll in Guatemala is 154. At least 65 died in El Salvador.

For the first time since the weekend, the weather cleared yesterday; this allowed Guatemala's president, Oscar Berger, to fly over devastated areas and evaluate the storm damage.

Berger asked the Congress to declare a state of emergency as rescue workers in Solola reported that two other villages had been buried by landslides, including Las Giraldas, about 55 miles west of Guatemala City. There, more than a dozen people were working to dig out houses that were buried when a second hillside collapsed.

In Quetzaltenango, Guatemala's second biggest city about 125 miles west of the capital, floodwaters rose 6 1/2 feet high, destroying hundreds of homes, businesses and public buildings, firefighters said.

More than 24,000 people from 270 communities took refuge in shelters throughout Guatemala, but they were suffering from the cold and a lack of food and water, according to radio reports.

''It was complicated arriving with new shipments of food" because of the bad weather, said Agriculture Minister Alvaro Aguilar.