Mudslides, rain leave 70 dead in Central America

The death toll from rains and mudslides across Central America rose on Sunday to more than 70, including at least nine people killed when the collapse of a hillside in El Salvador wiped out five dwellings, officials said.

International highways have been washed out, villages isolated and thousands of families have lost homes and crops in a region that the United Nations has classified as one of the most affected by climate change.

Hardest hit were Guatemala, where 28 people were reported dead and two others were missing, and El Salvador, with at least 27 dead after five days of intense rains unleashed by a stubbornly persistent tropical depression.

'We've got a very complicated situation,' said El Salvador's Environment Minister Herman Rosa Chavez, who said 15cm of rain over a 12-hour period had made the country's mountainous terrain unstable.

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