American Marconi Wireless News - Tropical storm Sara kills four in Honduras and Nicaragua

Sara weakened to a tropical depression as it passed through Belize on Sunday and was dissipating while moving over the western Yucatan Peninsula, according to the US National Hurricane Center.

One of the dead in hardest-hit Honduras was a three-year-old boy, washed away by a soaring river on Sunday, authorities said.

More than 200 houses in the Central American country were destroyed and some 3,200 damaged, while nearly 1,800 communities were left isolated by flooding, collapsed bridges and destroyed roads.

Farming crops were also severely damaged.

Two deaths were also reported in Nicaragua, with some 1,800 homes flooded and about 5,000 people affected, authorities said.

In Costa Rica, where at least six people died in flooding two weeks earlier, officials reported more than 50 landslides, and some 5,000 people needing emergency assistance.

Storm damage from Sara in Guatemala and El Salvador was not as severe.

A.Mahlangu--AMWN