NICARAGUA:The number of Nicaraguans who died when Hurricane Felix tore over Central America's Caribbean coast this week has now reached 130, a rescue official said yesterday.
"We have around 130 corpses listed," civil defence official Fabio Benedic said, noting the figure included Nicaraguan fishermen whose bodies washed up in neighbouring Honduras.
He said about 70 people were believed missing after high waves drowned fishermen and battered coastal villages.
President Daniel Ortega visited the country's debris-strewn northern coast yesterday as a US navy ship, US helicopters and a planeload of Venezuelan food aid arrived to help the rescue effort.
Felix, which brought back memories of Hurricane Mitch, which killed 10,000 people in Central America in 1998, struck near Nicaragua's border with Honduras on Tuesday as a category 5 storm, smashing up thousands of flimsy wooden homes and flattening trees.
In Honduras, officials initially reported 150 Nicaraguans had been rescued from the sea.
They later adjusted the figure to 52.
Felix developed very quickly over the warm waters of the southern Caribbean, and Nicaragua posted a hurricane warning less than 24 hours before it hit the coast, scrambling to notify villagers who have a long-standing mistrust of the government.
Meanwhile, the remnants of Hurricane Henriette dumped rain yesterday on Arizona and New Mexico. It hit Mexico on Tuesday and Wednesday. Officials said the Henriette death toll was 10.