Officials feared the toll could rise as emergency workers tried to reach communities cut off by flooded rivers or swept away by massive mudslides.

The death toll in hardest-hit Guatemala surged to 176 Friday when rescuers discovered 36 bodies in Solola Department west of the capital, President Oscar Berger said. Hundreds of Guatemalans are missing, he said.

The storm has also killed 67 in El Salvador, 11 in Nicaragua and 24 in Mexico, authorities in those countries said. Tens of thousands were left homeless across the region.

Stan slammed ashore as a hurricane in Mexico's state of Veracruz early Tuesday, but began pounding northern Central America with rain on October 1. Rain was still falling late Friday in southern Mexico and parts of Guatemala.

Berger warned Guatemalans to prepare for greater losses. "We are going to have unpleasant surprises. There are many missing, many landslides, towns cut off," he said.

Rescue efforts continued at a snail's pace with four out of five roads impassable and scant equipment to conduct searches by air in the impoverished country.

Six helicopters lent by the United States along with two from Mexico and one from Honduras took to the skies during daylight hours Friday but progress was slowed by the rains.

One of the worst hit areas was Lake Atitlan, a mountain-ringed lake west of Guatemala City popular with European and American tourists.

Wednesday, 55 people were killed outright and dozens went missing when a mudslide swept through the village of Santiago Atitlan about 180 kilometers (110 miles) west of the capital.

"Entire villages disappeared," said Maria Claridge, 25, an American rescued from the region Friday and carried to Guatemalan City by helicopter.

She had managed to extricate herself from a torrent of mud and water in the village of Santa Catarina but watched a man and a woman swept away.

"The noise will be engraved in my memory forever," she said, insisting that Guatemalans living around the lake were badly in need of aid.

The Mexican Navy rescued 44 Guatemalans trapped in the village of Malacatan, just across the border from Mexico, Mexican President Vicente Fox said Friday.

Fox announced the rescue moments before traveling to the remote town of Tapachula, Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala, to assess storm damage there.

Seven states in Mexico's south -- the poorest region of the country -- were affected by the storm. At least 24 Mexicans were confirmed dead.

In El Salvador -- 67 dead -- the trauma of the storm was magnified by an earthquake measuring 6.2 on the open-ended Richter scale that hit Friday at 1743 GMT. The quake's epicenter was 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of El Salvador's coast in the Pacific Ocean, according to the National Service of Terrestrial Studies.

On October 1, El Salvador's largest volcano erupted for the first time in a century, killing at least two and forcing more than 2,000 to flee.

The Panamerican Highway leading to the capital of San Salvador was cut off by mudslides, as were several other roads.

Japan's Prince Hitachi, younger brother of Emperor Akihito, on a four-day visit to El Salvador with his wife Hanako, visited a shelter housing storm victims Friday and donated mattresses, blankets and water purifiers worth a total 112,149 dollars, a foreign ministry source told AFP.

Cuba, Venezuela and France have also pledged aid to the region. The United Nations has requested 7.9 million dollars in aid from the international community.

The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30, has been one of the deadliest and most active on record. Stan was the 10th Atlantic hurricane this year.

Hurricane Katrina, which slammed the US Gulf of Mexico coast August 29, ravaged New Orleans and coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, killing more than 1,200 people and becoming the deadliest storm to hit the United States since 1928.

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