86 killed, hundreds feared dead in Guatemala landslide

Hopes have faded of finding any remaining survivors of a massive landslide in Guatemala that killed at least 86 people, with hundreds still missing.

Distraught relatives of the victims scrabbled through rubble to find the bodies of loved-ones after mounds of earth destroyed homes and buried anything in its path in Santa Catarina Pinula on the southeastern flank of Guatemala City.

Around 350 people are still unaccounted for.

Every batch of earth turned up by the diggers held more personal belongings, from mattresses and books to toys and Christmas decorations. Clutching photos of loved-ones, family members stood in line outside a makeshift morgue near the excavation site, some of them crying, to see if they recognized any corpses.

Loosened by rain, tons 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.

Some houses were buried under about 15 metres of earth, and Guatemalan disaster agency Conred said it doubted any other survivors would be found.

“Hope is the last think you lose, so we hope to find someone alive,” said Guatemala's defense minister Williams Mansilla, though he also acknowledged the likelihood was very low.

Meanwhile, there are fears of more landslides.

“We can see that the hill opposite the slide also runs the risk of a landslide. And on the side that already collapsed there is a fracture that could bring down more earth,” Julio Sanchez, a spokesman for the country's emergency services said.

“This is the worst thing that has happened to us,” said Ana Maria Escobar, a 48-year-old housewife, sobbing as she waited for news of 21 missing family members who lived in the town she had left a year ago.

One digger unearthed the body of a little girl with scratch marks on her arms and legs, which rescue workers said may have been signs of her struggles to escape. People looking on cried out to prevent the digger from destroying her body.