The death toll in the widespread flooding in southern Mexico rose to eight on Saturday as rescuers struggled to evacuate people from rooftops and bring supplies to those protecting their homes from would-be looters, the Associated Press reported. The department of civil defense in Chiapas state, which borders on Guatemala, reported finding seven bodies between Friday and Saturday. The dead included five adults swept away by swollen rivers, a 25-year-old undocumented Honduran immigrant who drowned while trying to cross a river, and an 8-year-old girl who fell from a bridge. In the neighboring Tabasco -- where one man died earlier in the week, and where almost 80 percent of the state was covered in water -- the level of some rivers began to recede slightly Saturday. The government also said it would reduce water outflows from a dam upstream. Still, the state capital of Villahermosa remained largely flooded and prey to horrifying rumors -- that crocodiles, which normally live along the banks of some rivers, had invaded the murky floodwaters in the city's center, or that the dam upstream was about to burst.
