Rescuers searching for up to 1,400 people buried when a landslide swept away a Maya Indian village finally gave up last night.
Villagers salvage what they can from a building destroyed by a massive mudslide in the village of Panabaj, Guatemala.
Five days after a river of mud wiped Panabaj off Guatemala's map, firefighters called off the gruesome and dangerous rescue effort.
"We're not going back tomorrow, it's just too contaminated in there," chief firefighter Mario Ramirez said late last night.
A Spanish rescue team with sniffer dogs had earlier led a final, futile search for survivors.
"It's a pity we were given bad information because we thought there were survivors here waiting to be saved," said one of the Spanish team.
Panabaj sat between a volcano and Lake Atitlan's turquoise waters in spectacular countryside that draws thousands of American and European backpackers every year.
But it disappeared under a landslide of mud, rocks and trees that poured hundreds of yards down the volcano. Now it will almost certainly be declared a mass grave.
Some in the impoverished region lost dozens of family members in the tragedy, one of Latin America's biggest natural disasters of recent years.
The fire department put the death toll at around 1,400, and the mayor of nearby Santiago Atitlan said between 1,000 and 1,500 had died. Only 77 bodies have been found, and the exact death toll will almost certainly never be known.
