San Jose(Costa Rica): Helicopters plucked tourists from destroyed, mountaintop resorts as the death toll from Costa Rica's magnitude-6.1 earthquake rose to at least 9 victims, the Red Cross said.

Dozens more remained missing as survivors reported seeing people buried by landslides.

"I watched as the earth took my aunt and my cousins ... I watched them be buried," Miguel Angel Marin told Channel 7 news.

The quake shook the Central American nation Thursday afternoon, collapsing homes, unleashing massive landslides, and trapping hundreds of people in damaged mountain towns.

Red Cross spokeswoman Fiorella Vilca said yesterday the dead include 7 and 11-year-old sisters buried in a landslide, a 12-year-old girl whose home was crushed by falling earth, two men found dead in San Pedro de Poas, and three bodies found in a battered truck near the Angel waterfall popular with tourists. Another victim died of a heart attack in the capital, San Jose.

Yesterday, rescue officials reached nearly 500 people trapped in the hardest hit zone - a mountainous area with few access roads, most of which were blocked by landslides.

"We are trying to evacuate these areas as soon as possible," Red Cross spokesman Freddy Roman said.

Many residents of the area are small farmers who raise livestock or grow strawberries and ornamental plants. The region has also seen increased tourism in recent years.

Allan Flores, head of the Costa Rican Tourism Institute, told Channel 7 that about 200 Costa Rican and foreign tourists were trapped at the La Paz Waterfall Gardens hotel, a luxury eco-resort in Vara Blanca.

He said no tourists at the hotel appeared to be injured.

Source : PTI