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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | July 2007 
Rescue Teams Call Off Search for Victims of Landslide in Mexico
 Deutsche Presse-Agentur
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| | Soldiers carry the body of a mudslide victim in San Miguel Eloxochitlan, Mexico, Thursday, July 5, 2007. (AP/Eduardo Verdugo) |
Mexico City - Rescue teams on Friday called off the search for more victims of a landslide in Mexico, after recovering 32 bodies, even though local authorities warned that there might be more people buried under the debris.
'Technicians tell us that there is nothing to rescue any more. Everything is done,' the state of Puebla's Interior Minister Javier Lopez Zavala told Mexican television.
On Wednesday, a landslide buried a bus in Puebla's Sierra Negra, some 350 kilometres south-east of Mexico City.
Authorities on Thursday said about 35 to 40 people were believed to have been on the bus, though exact numbers could not be given. On Wednesday, the figure had first been put at 40 to 60.
On Friday, Puebla state authorities ruled out that any more bodies might be found.
Local authorities at the nearby town of Zacocoapan demanded that the search continue until the presence of more bodies can be totally ruled out.
'What do you mean they are not going to keep searching? We demand that all the debris be removed, because people say the truck was full. It cannot be that there are no more bodies,' assistant mayor Armando Gonzalez said.
'For the tranquillity of the village, we want every stone to be removed so that there is no doubt that there are no more dead buried there,' he insisted.
The bodies found so far include 19 men, nine women and four children. Two of the dead have not yet been identified.
Coming during the rainy season, the mudslide occurred in the early morning when part of a hill broke off along a road in the community of Eloxochitlan near Tehuacan, in Puebla. The weight of the landslide crushed the roof of the bus, leaving it just 1 metre above the ground.
The bus was travelling between several communities in the Sierra Negra. Peasants, workers and students usually travel between communities on buses each morning. |
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