Felix kills 38 in Nicaragua; survivors wash ashore

By Oswaldo Rivas

PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua (Reuters) - Soldiers searched for more bodies on Thursday after Hurricane Felix killed 38 people in Nicaragua, while 52 members of a group of Miskito Indians washed ashore alive in neighboring Honduras.

Dozens were still missing after Felix tore into Nicaragua's swampy Caribbean coast late on Tuesday, destroying thousands of flimsy homes and making tracks through barely developed jungle areas even less passable than normal.

But local government officials said 52 bedraggled Miskitos, mainly fishermen, washed up in the Honduran port of Raya near the Nicaraguan border after being swept off a tiny island and surviving the storm clinging to boards and lifebuoys.

"Fifty-two Nicaraguan Miskitos, part of the 150 or so that had disappeared, were found in Honduran waters," Carolina Echeverria, a deputy from Cabo Gracias a Dios on the border with Nicaragua, told Reuters by telephone.

"They were holding onto planks and buoys for hours," she said, after speaking to officials in Raya by radio.

She said around half of the survivors were in good enough health to be sent home on Thursday on a Nicaraguan Navy boat, while the other half were being taken to hospital in Honduras for treatment for exposure.

The turtle-fishing Miskito Indians, who live mainly in wooden shacks in isolated marshlands dotted with lagoons and crocodile-infested rivers, were hard hit by Felix. Some 35,000 Miskitos live in Honduras and more than 100,000 in Nicaragua.

Echeverria said the survivors had been on a small key fishing for lobster when the storm approached, and many more may still be unaccounted for.