By Jose Cortes
from Reuters

ELOXOCHITLAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexican rescuers dug out the bodies of 31 people on Thursday and searched for dozens more believed killed when part of a rain’soaked mountain collapsed on a bus carrying up to 60 passengers.

About 500 soldiers and rescue workers labored with pick-axes and shovels and used dogs to find the victims, hit by the mudslide on a remote road near the mountain town of Eloxochitlan in the southern state of Puebla.

Rescuers also used bulldozers and other heavy machinery to claw away boulders, dirt and trees to reach the bus, which was buried under some 23 feet of mud after the hillside collapsed early on Wednesday.

“We don’t expect to find anyone alive,” local government spokesman Javier Lopez said in the state capital Puebla.

The corpses of at least four children were pulled out as emergency workers dug up crumpled chunks of the bus, which was crushed on a winding road about a mile below the tiny village of Zacacuapan.

Villagers heard the landslide but only realized what had happened when the bus failed to arrive.

“We got down there and it was all covered up and we realized something had happened because the bus never arrived,” said coffee grower Benito Cortes, 30, who said he knew most of the victims.

Rescuers were hampered on Thursday by the flattened condition of the bus and concerns that more of the sodden hillside could give way.

read more at Reuters