TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AFP) — Fifty-seven people have died and eight are missing in Honduras following Tropical Storm Eta, authorities said Monday, as the death toll doubled in one of the countries worst hit by the storm.
Eta slammed into Central America last week as a Category 4 hurricane, leaving over 200 people across the region dead or missing.
Honduras was one of the worst affected, with swathes of the country now under water and authorities having reported 23 dead on Sunday.
Two major rivers overflowed in Honduras’ Sula Valley economic heartland, causing widespread flooding and trapping tens of thousands of people.
Eight people remain missing, according to the country’s emergency authority COPECO.
President Juan Orlando Hernandez thanked US soldiers from a joint task force based in Palmerola in the center of the country, as well as neighboring El Salvador, for their help in assisting the victims.
A 21-strong rescue team from El Salvador arrived on Saturday as part of the relief operation.
A convoy of around 60 additional vehicles arrived from the country on Monday, carrying food and other supplies to help hurricane victims and teams of rescue workers and doctors.
Eta left a trail of destruction through Honduras and Guatemala, eventually weakening to a tropical storm after making landfall in Nicaragua on Tuesday.
El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba and Mexico have suffered varying degrees of damage from the storm, which swept into Florida on Monday with strong winds and heavy rain.
The country with the highest death toll so far is Guatemala, where around 150 people are dead or missing.
Torrential rain and a bitter cold front linked to the storm have also claimed at least 20 lives in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
nl/mas/db/st/to/oho
© Agence France-Presse
