CNN

Rescuers searched Thursday for survivors of powerful Hurricane Felix, which a Nicaraguan official said has claimed 48 lives, a death toll sure to climb.

Casualty reports have yet to come from at least 70 percent of villages and towns along Nicaragua’s swampy jungle coast, where Felix slammed ashore with 160 mph winds on Tuesday, said disaster official Jorge Ramon Arnesto Soza.

Soza, the executive secretary of the National System for the Prevention, Mitigation and Attention of Disasters, said those expected reports will likely raise the current death toll, which he described as “very low.”

Survivors of the storm struggled Thursday. An Associated Press photographer arrived in one isolated village in Nicaragua and saw residents cracking coconuts to drink the milk because they had nothing else, the AP reported.

The U.S. Southern Command has sent the USS Wasp to Nicaragua to help with relief efforts, and Venezuela also sent aid, according to the AP. At least 57 Cuban doctors and nurses already working on the Miskito coast were lending a hand, too.

Authorities rescued 52 Miskito Indians who lived on low-lying reefs and keys off the coast, said Honduran congresswoman Carolina Echeverria. They survived the hurricane’s deluge by grasping floating objects until help arrived, she said.

Bodies that could not be recovered were seen floating in the water, said Echeverria.

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