Agatha unleashes a deadly fury

Guatemala City: Torrential rains brought by the first tropical storm of the season pounded Guatemala and southern Mexico, triggering deadly landslides.

The death toll stood at 12 early yesterday but authorities said the number could rise.

Agatha crossed the coast near the border of Guatemala and Mexico on Saturday as a tropical storm with wind speeds of up to 75km/h, then weakened into a tropical depression as it pushed inland.

But authorities warned that trouble was far from over as the remnants of Agatha continued to dump rain on vulnerable hillside and riverside settlements in Guatemala and southern Mexico.

"It has been downgraded to a tropical depression, but this means that the velocity of the wind has fallen, not the amount of rain," Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said late Saturday.

He said the rivers in the country's south were flooding or close to it.

Colom said 10.8cm of rain had fallen in Guatemala City's valley in the past 12 hours, the most since 1949.

As of Saturday night, 4,300 people were in shelters and authorities said the official number could rise as figures were received from around the country.

Earlier Saturday, Agatha's rains caused a landslide on a hillside settlement in Guatemala City that killed four people and left 11 missing, Guatemalan disaster relief spokesman David de Leon said.

Most of the city was without electricity at nightfall, complicating search efforts.

Four children were killed by another mudslide in the town of Santa Catarina Pinula about 10km outside the Guatemalan capital. And in the department of Quetzaltenango, 200km west of Guatemala City, a boulder loosened by rains crushed a house, killing two children and two adults, de Leon said.

Calls to local radio stations told of many more landslides and possible deaths but those reports could not be immediately confirmed.

A three-storey building in northern Guatemala City fell into a sink-hole but there were no reports of victims.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes offered to receive international aid on Guatemala's behalf, at airports near their shared borders with the country.

Cesar George of Guatemala's meteorological institute said the community of Champerico had received 30cm of rain in the past 30 hours.

"It rained in one day what it usually gets in a month," George said.

Colom said authorities had not been able to reach Champerico by "air, land or sea".