PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua (AP):

United States, Honduran and Nicaraguan soldiers searched remote jungle beaches and the open sea for survivors and cadavers after Hurricane Felix claimed at least 98 lives, many of them Miskito Indians who died fleeing the Category Five storm.

Two days after the storm hit, dozens more bodies were recovered Thursday along the Miskito coastline that stretches across the Nicaragua-Honduras border, including at least 44 Indian fishermen whose bodies were found floating at sea, emergency officials said.

Abelino Cox, a spokesman for the Regional Emergency Committee, said the death toll from 'Felix' had risen to 98, including two people killed in the village of Sing Sing, 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of Puerto Cabezas.

native indians devastated

The storm also completely destroyed the ethnic Zumo and Mayagna Indian community of Awastingni, located 90 kilometres (55 miles) north-west of Puerto Cabezas, Cox said. Fourteen members of the jungle community were missing.

"This is horrifying," said Brooklin Rivera, a lawmaker who is on the emergency committee.

Felix damaged or destroyed nearly 8,000 houses in and around Puerto Cabezas and 18,000 Nicaraguans are living in shelters, civil defence officials said.

Aid was arriving slowly in the region, where descendants of Indians, European settlers and African slaves live in stilt homes on island reefs and in small hamlets, surviving by fishing and diving for lobster.