Rescuers dig 14 bodies from Mexican bus mudslide

ELOXOCHITLAN, Mexico, July 5 (Reuters) Mexican rescuers dug out the corpses of 14 people and searched for dozens more crushed when the side of a rain-soaked mountain collapsed on a bus carrying up to 60 passengers on a remote road.

About 200 soldiers and rescue workers worked through the night. A local government spokesman said today morning that 14 bodies, including those of two children, had been recovered from the mudslide at the remote mountain town of Eloxochitlan in the southern state of Puebla.

''We don't expect to find anyone alive,'' said the official, who asked not to be identified by name.

The bus was thought to be carrying between 45 and 60 people.

Radio reports said a further 10 corpses had been spotted in the rubble.

The rescue teams used bulldozers and heavy machinery to claw away jagged boulders, dirt and trees to reach the victims after the landslide swallowed the bus on Wednesday on a winding road.

As rescuers dug deeper there were fears that more of the sodden hillside could collapse, the spokesman said.

The bus lay underneath some 23 feet of mud, stirring memories of mudslide disasters in southern Mexico and Central America after the rains of Hurricane Stan in 2005.

The start of the rainy season in Mexico has brought driving rain to many parts of the country, saturating hillsides where poor farming communities live.

It took rescue teams hours to reach Eloxochitlan yesterday from nearby cities.

Relatives of missing people waited through the night at the scene of the accident and held candlelit vigils.

''A lot of them were teachers. They were my friends,'' a local man who saw the mudslide happen told Mexican television.

Reuters SY DB2146