Maya Indian villagers gave up hope on Monday of finding up to 1,400 victims buried in a huge mudslide in Guatemala even as sniffer dogs led a final, almost certainly futile search for miracle survivors. A fisherman in a dugout canoe found a dead 3-month-old boy in nearby Lake Atitlan. The baby apparently was swept into the water by the landslide that wiped out the village of Panabaj five days ago after heavy rains from Hurricane Stan battered Central America. A Spanish search and rescue team used sniffer dogs to look for survivors but they held out very little hope. "I don't think there is any hope of finding anyone alive, but we are going to try," said Spaniard Francisco Toledano. Some in this impoverished region lost dozens of family members in the tragedy, one of Latin America's biggest natural disasters of recent years. "Thirty relatives of mine used to live there. None of them have appeared," said Gaspar Mendoza, a peasant dressed in traditional Maya Indian garb and holding a shovel. --more 2324 Local Time 2024 GMT
