Tropical Storm Julia’s death toll has risen to at least 25, with most of the deaths in El Salvador and Honduras, after the storm brought heavy rainfall to large areas of Central America and southern Mexico, officials said.
And El Salvador authorities followed up on the killing of ten people, including five soldiers, while at least 1,000 people were evacuated.
The authorities in El Salvador and Guatemala canceled classes on Monday.
Honduras officials said five people have died, including a woman who died Sunday after being swept away by flooding and a four-year-old boy who capsized in a boat near the Nicaraguan border on Saturday evening.
Panama’s emergency services confirmed later on Monday that two people had died due to heavy rain and about 300 people had been evacuated from areas near the border with Costa Rica.
Storm Julia made landfall on the Nicaraguan Caribbean coast on Sunday before moving into the Pacific Ocean.
The US National Hurricane Center said the storm moved northwest at a speed of 24 kilometers per hour on Monday towards Guatemala, near its border with Mexico.
The Miami-based center has calculated that the maximum wind speed associated with Julia is currently around 45 kilometers per hour.
Honduran authorities said 9,200 people are seeking asylum.
In Nicaragua, a hurricane cut off power for a million people, and heavy rains and floods forced more than 13,000 families to evacuate.