
The toll from the eruption of a highly active volcano near Guatemala`s capital rose to 69, a government agency has said.
Only 13 of the dead have been identified so far, Mirna Zeledon, a spokeswoman for Guatemala's National Institute of Forensic Sciences told Reuters.
The eruption of Fuego - Spanish for "fire" - on Sunday was the biggest in more than four decades, forcing the closure of Guatemala's main international airport and dumping ash on thousands of acres (hectares) of coffee farms on the volcano's slopes.
David de Leon, a spokesman for Guatemala's disaster management agency, said several more bodies had been recovered in the rubble of villages on the volcano's southern flank, which bore the brunt of the disaster.
Authorities had warned the death toll could rise as a number of people had been reported missing.
De Leon said some 1.7 million people had been affected when the volcano erupted on Sunday, shooting a dense cloud of ash into the sky and sending a hail of fiery rock fragments and scalding mud down the mountainside, burying homes.
Fuego has been erupting since 2002 and was continuously active in 2017. There were explosions and ash plumes on May 19-21 as well as a volcanic mudflow on May 17.
The last emergency occurred in September 2012, causing the evacuation of some 10,000 people from villages on its slopes.
(With inputs from Reuters)