Some 7,000 deaths occurred in Honduras, Col Rene Osorio of the country's national emergency commission said. The scope of the tragedy was likely to widen. Col Osorio said 11,100 people remained missing almost a week after Mitch began lashing the country.

Natural disasters in the region seemed endless as a Volcano in Nicaragua began erupting near the Casitas peak where massive mudslides killed as many as 1,950 people last Friday. Mitch, once one of the century's most formidable storms, regrouped on Tuesday into a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico.

Floods and mudslides caused by Mitch were blamed for deaths across a broad, 805-km corridor from Nicaragua into Southern Mexico, from the hurricane-scoured bay islands off Honduras' Atlantic coast to the Pacific.

In Northern Nicaragua, the CerroNegro volcano began spewing ash and lava yesterday, just 35 km from the Casitas volcano, whose slopes sent a tidal wave of mud crashing into villages Friday.

As the sun broke out over Central America after a week of storms, many cities and settlements found themselves virtual islands, isolated by destroyed bridges or washed-out roads.

Honduras estimates that two million people were forced from their homes or lost their possessions in the flooding. Refugees waved frantically to helicopters passing over villages surrounded by flood waters in Honduras' eastern La Mosquitia region yesterday.

The United States sent more than two dozen military aircraft and 500 military personnel into the region to assist with air surveillance and rescue missions.

Damage to vital coffee and banana crops that sustain the Central American Economies also was extensive. Chiquita Brands International Inc said its regional banana farms and operations suffered an estimated $ 50 million in losses.

In Guatemala, struck by Mitchover the weekend, president Alvaro Arzu reported yesterday that 157 people had died, 100,000 homes were damaged and 30 highways were blocked.

El Salvador's national emergency committee reported 222 deaths, 135 missing and 50,000 driven from their homes by the flooding.

And Mexican authorities said remnants of Mitch killed at least five people in the southern state of Chiapas.

At the United Nations, UN ambassadors from five nations appealed for international help yesterday to feed and clothe the survivors and bury the dead.

Rebuilding the hardest-hit countries Honduras and Nicaragua will take many years and billions of dollars. But with victims still clinging to trees and rooftops, the ambassadors said the region's top priority is emergency assistance.

Honduran ambassador Hugo Noe-Pino flanked by envoys from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Costa Rica said the killer storm had put the country's development efforts back by at least 30 years.