Deluge kills a dozen people

Muddy water spilled on to streets and into homesin a new round of unusually heavy rains that has killed at least a dozen people in Peru and now threatens flooding in the capital.

The intense rains and mudslides over the past three days have wrought havoc around the Andean nation.

They caught out people in Lima, a desert city of 10million where it almost never rains.

Residents watched as a woman escaped after being swept into an avalanche of mud, wood debris and farm animals 32 miles south of Lima.

Evangelina Chamorro, 32, had just dropped her two daughters at school and was feeding her pigs alongside her husband when they were pulled into a landslide.

Armando Rivera, her husband, said they climbed a tree but the trunk broke. They held on to each other’s hands but she eventually lost his grip and got separated.

She emerged near a bridge, lifting herself from a c urrent of wooden planks and walking towards the shore covered head to toe in mud. She suffered only minor injuries.

The authorities expect the rains caused by El Nino, which generates a warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, to continue for another two weeks.

62 people have died and 12,000 homes have been destroyed in storms this year.

In Lima, the swelling Huaycoloro river swept away two trucks and threatened to destroy a bridge, while schools nationwide have suspended classes.

And seven of the nation’s most dangerous criminals were temporarily transported to another facility after a river near the prison threatened to overflow.

President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said the authorities will provide shelter and relief to those left homeless.