Emergency workers are battling bad weather and rough terrain on their way to a remote rural area in northern Colombia where mudslides caused by heavy rains have killed at least four people and left up to 35 others missing, officials say.
Colombian rescuers attempt to reach mudslidesArmed groups fighting in the country's 38-year-old guerrilla war were also hampering rescue efforts.
Eduardo Gonzalez, head of the government's emergency office, said the landslides swept through several villages in Bolivar Province, burying houses and crops under a river of mud and stones.
The landslides, which took place between Monday and Wednesday, struck near the village of Montecristo, 250 miles north of the capital, Bogota.
"We have four people dead and between 30 to 35 people disappeared. There are 120 families homeless," Gonzalez said by telephone on Friday.
Local officials and doctors first reported on Thursday that six people were killed and up to 60 peasants were feared dead.
Villages were flooded by swirling brown waters and vast areas of crops had turned to mud.
Gonzalez said Red Cross and civil emergency personnel were on the way with medicines and blankets. But there was no word when the rescuers would arrive in the area, which has been lashed by heavy rains for days.
Montecristo lies in the foothills of Serrania de San Lucas, a mountain range fiercely disputed by leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary outlaws vying for control of drug crops.
"An armed group, I would imagine the rebels, are staging an armed blockade in the area, which is preventing us from arriving in the area," Montecristo Mayor Carmen Duarte Rodriguez told local radio. "The place is very far. It will take us 10 to 12 hours to get there," she said.
Deforestation to allow cultivation of coca - used to make cocaine - might have contributed to the disaster, which apparently happened after two hills collapsed, experts said.