Rescue workers find 60 more bodies in Guatemala, raising flooding death toll to 246

Rescue workers in Guatemala said they found at least 40 bodies from a massive mudslide and found 20 more dead in a swollen river Thursday, raising to 246 the number of people killed from five days of pounding rains in Central America and Mexico.

Officials expected the death to toll to climb as they searched for more than 150 others who were missing following the landslide in Solola, a town close to Lake Atitlan, 60 miles (100 kilometers) 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.

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 their son Claudio was born Wednesday.

Manchinel said the flooding reminded him of Hurricane Mitch, which killed at least 9,000 people throughout Central America in 1998.

"We thought it was going to be like Mitch in 1998," he said Thursday. "But now it's worse," reports the AP.

P.T.