More than 80 people have died in landslides in Colombia and Venezuela after torrential rains the Venezuelan president has blamed on a "criminal" use of resources by developed nations.
One landslide in Bello, a suburb of the north-western Colombian city of Medellín, covered homes in mud and rubble, rescue workers said yesterday.
The head of emergency services for Antioquia state, John Rendon, said: "It was a mass landslide that buried more than 50 homes approximately and we are talking about 40 or 50 people possibly being underneath the rubble".
Authorities were trying to get mechanical diggers to the scene, and had sent sniffer dogs to locate survivors.
While landslides are relatively common in Colombia's Andean regions, this year's downpours have been particularly torrential, blamed on the La Niña weather phenomenon. A total of 170 people have died; 1.5 million have been left homeless.
The country's president, Juan Manuel Santos, who toured flood-affected areas yesterday, said the government was considering declaring a state of emergency. "The tragedy the country is going through has no precedents in our history," he said, after flying over one badly hit region.
In neighbouring Venezuela at least 32 people have died in mudslides in recent days, with 70,000 forced from their homes.
The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, who has accommodated 25 homeless families in his presidential palace and ordered government ministries and army barracks to make room for more, has blamed the disaster on capitalist excesses in richer countries.
"The calamities we are suffering with these cruel and prolonged rains are yet more evidence of the unfair and cruel paradox of our planet," he wrote in a weekly opinion column. "The developed nations irresponsibly shatter the environmental order, in their desire to maintain a criminal development model, while the immense majority of the earth's people suffer the most terrible consequences".
He added: "The environmental imbalance capitalism has caused is without doubt the fundamental cause of the alarming atmospheric phenomena. The world's powerful economies insist on a destructive way of life and then refuse to take any responsibility".
Chávez, who has come under political pressure since the rains, also lambasted rich Venezuelans as he toured the flood zones, ordering the annexation of land set aside for hotels and other tourist infrastructure to build temporary shelters. "You, bourgeoisie, should offer your golf courses," he said, addressing the homeless using a megaphone. The Guardian
