Authorities recovered more bodies Monday from the rubble of the Mexico’s huge earthquake, bringing the death toll to 96 as the president prepares to visit the worst-hit region, his office said.
The latest deaths were reported in the southern state of Oaxaca, which bore the brunt of Thursday’s quake and which President Enrique Pena Nieto was expected to visit on Monday.
Mexican authorities gave a toll of 90 on Sunday.
Pena Nieto’s spokesman said the president would supervise the delivery of food aid and blankets during his trip, but did not specify where.
The defense and navy ministries had organized an airlift to Oaxaca and neighboring Chiapas and were bringing in heavy machinery to remove rubble, presidency spokesman Eduardo Sanchez told Televisa.
He acknowledge that the distribution of food and shelter is complicated as both regions are mountainous and the worst-hit areas were “very difficult to reach.”
Oaxaca’s governor Alejandro Murat said at least 12,000 homes were damaged in his state, and called on those affected to make their own way to shelters because it was proving impossible to distribute aid house by house.
Mexican seismological authorities measured the quake at 8.2, making it a magnitude greater than the 8.1 quake that killed 10,000 people in Mexico City in 1985.
