But many families have refused, saying that they have nowhere to go.
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In this Saturday, October 3, 2015 photo, Welsar Nazario carries the…
Hundreds of people were still missing after a mass of earth and rubble crashed down on a neighbourhood in the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula on Thursday.
Rescue teams resumed searching on Sunday for victims of the mudslide in a community outside Guatemala City that killed at least 87 people and left 350 others missing, emergency management officials said.
On Friday, there were reports of family members receiving text messages of buried survivors asking to be rescued.
“May God have mercy on the dead, grant healing to the injured, comfort loved ones and give the rescue workers strength”, he said on Twitter. A similar number were still unaccounted for on Sunday, they said, sharply revising down a previous estimate as they recalculated the local population. He told reporters that several young children, including newborn babies, were among the dead in Santa Catarina Pinula.
A makeshift morgue was set up next to the buried homes. She opened the window to see what was going on and saw a dust cloud coming toward them.
Loosened by rain, tonnes of earth, rock, and trees had cascaded onto a neighbourhood of the town known as El Cambray II near the bottom of a ravine, flattening houses and trapping residents who had gone home for the night.
“We found the two month-old twins, and now we are looking for their mother and sister”, a villager said.
Authorities said on Sunday they would force families still living in the high-risk zone on the hill to relocate.
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west. With an estimated population of around 15.8 million, it is the most populous state in Central America.
The tragedy has hit Guatemala after weeks of political turmoil, and as it prepares to elect a new president.
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Doctors at a shelter in Santa Catarina Pinula anxious more about the immediate fallout for survivors of the disaster, describing widespread cases of emotional trauma. Numerous bodies were never recovered.
