Hurricane Felix killed at least 21 people on Nicaragua's low-lying Caribbean coast and over 200 people are missing after the storm laid waste to thousands of flimsy homes, the government said today.
The Navy was trying to reach settlements on marshy spits of land by the sea or on keys to look for more injured or dead from Felix, which crashed into the coast on Tuesday as a Category 5 hurricane.
"There are more than 200 people missing," Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said in the port of Puerto Cabezas.
People wept at the harbor in Puerto Cabezas, inhabited mostly by Miskito Indians, for 12 fishermen they said had failed to return from sea.