Rains spur deadly mudslides in Venezuela

Mudslides triggered by unseasonable torrential rains buried poverty-stricken neighborhoods in the Venezuelan capital Caracas on Thursday, and authorities feared scores of people may have died.
Firefighters reported at least 20 people missing in the city following the landslides, which killed 37 people on Wednesday in a coastal area just north of Caracas. Hundreds of residents from low-income areas and shantytowns also were left homeless as rivers burst their banks.

President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday night that 37 bodies had been recovered in Vargas state, most of them in La Guaira, a port town 35 miles (55 km) north of Caracas close to the Simon Bolivar international airport.

The main highway linking Caracas to the airport was blocked on Thursday. A state of emergency was decreed in eight of the country's 23 states following the downpour. In Caracas, many streets were impassable, littered with debris and flooded by up to two feet of water, creating huge traffic jams.

Schools were ordered closed for the day, and the underground metro was shut down. "The rainfall in the past two weeks has been the heaviest in 60 years," Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma told the Globovision television network.

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