Search goes on for survivors of Hurricane Felix

The death toll from the storm has reached at least 98.

PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua (AP) — U.S., Honduran and Nicaraguan soldiers searched remote jungle beaches and the open sea Thursday for survivors and the dead from Hurricane Felix’s rampage. Villagers in canoes helped, paddling through waters thick with fallen trees.

Two days after the storm hit, many more dead were found, raising the known toll to 98, many of them Miskito Indians who had tried to flee the Category 5 hurricane. Officials believed more dead would be found by teams combing the coast across the Nicaragua-Honduras border.

At least 32 people were still missing after their village was destroyed and the boats they fled in capsized. Many of the 52 survivors who washed ashore or were found clinging to debris were being treated for dehydration in the seaside Honduran village of Villeda Morales.

Rescue and aid was arriving slowly in the impoverished region, where descendants of Indians, European settlers and African slaves live in stilt homes on island reefs and in small hamlets, surviving by fishing and diving for lobster.

The scene

Interviewed by phone from the area, Honduran Col. Saul Orlando Coca told The Associated Press that 25 bodies were found Thursday. Earlier, Nicaraguan and Honduran officials had put the death toll at 40, almost all along the Miskito Coast.

The colonel said U.S. and Honduran military personnel were patrolling the sea and inlets with helicopters and boats while soldiers walked the shore on foot.

Martin Alvarez, who captains a fishing boat, radioed Nicaraguan authorities that he had pulled nine bodies from the ocean and was bringing them to port, said Ramon Arnesto Soza, a Nicaraguan civil defense chief.

The ocean was filled with debris, preventing a rescue mission from going ashore at Sandy Bay, Nicaragua, the village where the eye of Felix made landfall with catastrophic 160 mph winds and a storm surge estimated at 18 feet above normal tides.