Matthew blamed for 6 deaths in Mexico

Mexico City, Agency
Matthew's path through Mexico as a tropical depression left at least six people dead and four missing, as well as floods that forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes, authorities said Monday.

The hardest-hit area was the southern state of Chiapas, where four people died, three went missing and some 2,000 were displaced, at the same time that 800 homes, highways and the water systems of a score of municipalities suffered damages.

The rains in Nuevo Leon - bordering Texas - left two people drowned, another missing and several families evacuated because of a mudslide in a residential neighborhood.

The deaths took place in the rural municipality of Allende, some 40 kilometers south of Monterrey, the state capital, when an car carrying three men was swept away by the Mireles stream. Hours later two bodies were recovered, while the search continues for the third person who was in the car.

Sunday afternoon, boulders and earth broke from a hillside on the Loma Larga mountain in Monterrey and buried nine cars parked at an apartment building, from which 84 people were evacuated as a precautionary measure.

At least 1,000 people were displaced by the flooding of the Oxolotan and Tacotalpa rivers in a mountainous area of the southeastern state of Tabasco. They found protection in temporary shelters.

Rains of more than 150 millimeters (6 inches) raised the level of the rivers and swamped the state capital, Villahermosa.

Seven of Tabasco's 10 rivers are at flood stage.

In the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, battered the week before by Hurricane Karl, Matthew left minor damages, though the Papaloapan and Coatzacoalcos rivers, which wind through more than a dozen municipalities, were swollen by the heavy rains.

Matthew, which on Sunday became a low pressure system in the Gulf of Mexico, downgraded to a tropical depression as it moved away from Central America, where it left thousands of people affected.