Huge landslide hits Mexican village; 11 missing

OAXACA, Mexico – Rescue workers using megaphones to call out to survivors climbed through mud Tuesday in a slow, slogging search after a powerful landslide crashed into an indigenous village in this southern Mexican state as residents slept.

Despite fears of widespread loss of life in the town of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, however, only a handful of people were missing Tuesday evening. Poor road and weather conditions throughout the day had hampered rescue efforts and attempts to fathom the full scale of the slide. Swollen, chocolate-colored rivers swept over their banks in places. Some bridges were washed out.

By nightfall the state governor, Ulises Ruiz, who had earlier said four people were confirmed dead and 12 missing, reversed himself by announcing that there were no confirmed fatalities and 11 people were confirmed missing. Rescuers in the town were still conducting house-to-house searches, but Ruiz said they had not found any bodies.

“We are without electricity, light, phone service,” Donato Vargas, a community official in Santa Maria, said in a radio interview. He reported having counted 10 homes destroyed so far.