Hurricane Dean rains pound Mexico, 9 killed

Mexico City, Aug 24: Heavy rains from Hurricane Dean pounded western Mexico after the storm killed at least nine people in a three-day rampage across the breadth of the country.

Dean, which has weakened to a tropical depression, caused two rivers and a reservoir to overflow in the mountains of Hidalgo state and dumped rain yesterday as far away as Jalisco, which lies on the Pacific coast.

Two people died in Hidalgo when their roof collapsed after a downpour, and a man sheltering under a tree was killed by lightning in Michoacan, emergency services said.

Four others died in a mudslide in the eastern Mexican state of Puebla and two other people were reported dead on Wednesday, local emergency services said.

Dean damaged Mayan villages and beach resorts in a run across the Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday, then churned through the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday and slammed into Mexico's eastern coastline.

The storm was a Category 5 hurricane when it hit the Yucatan, becoming the first storm of that strength to touch land in the Atlantic basin since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

The storm killed 26 people in Mexico, Haiti, Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean region.

Mexico's state oil monopoly, Pemex, said oil production, 80 percent of which was cut due to the storm, would begin to return to normal today.

Reuters>