Landfall death toll rises to 24

RESCUERS digging through mud and rocks have recovered at least 24 bodies from a bus buried on a rural Mexican road after a mountainside gave way, officials said yesterday.

Rescue workers held out little hope of survivors among the 40 to 60 passengers thought to be on the bus.

Hundreds of soldiers and rescue workers have been labouring since Wednesday afternoon in an effort to find survivors, said Mario Marin, governor of the central state of Puebla, where the landslide occurred.

Heavy rains triggered the slide on Wednesday morning on a remote winding road near the town of Eloxochitlan.

Mr Marin said at least 14 bodies had been pulled out of the wreckage, eight of which had been identified, and that officials were bringing coffins to the site.

Among those unidentified was a woman still holding her baby in her arms.

Puebla’s chief of ambulance services, Salvador Bianchini, told the Televisa television network in a live interview from the site that workers had recovered more than a dozen bodies after searching only a small front section of the bus.

“The search is very difficult,” he said, adding officials were concerned that a nearby cliff with loose rocks and earth could come tumbling down at any moment.

Officials declined to say whether they hoped to find survivors, but Mr Bianchini indicated it was believed all of the passengers had died.

Local news media reported that the bus was carrying more than 50 people from Eloxochitlan, which is an extremely poor town in central Mexico.

On Wednesday, weeping relatives of the passengers, and local residents crowded around barriers guarded by soldiers near the site of the landslide, which occurred as the bus was heading to the nearby town of Tehuacan.