David Loyn: Honduras needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up

The first airliners carrying supplies promised by President Bill Clinton have landed in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.

Engineers have managed to link the city with the its main port, allowing aid shipments delivered by sea to be moved on.

US aid is on its way

But serious problems remain in distributing aid to rural areas of the countries devastated by Mitch.

Reports from remote areas of Nicaragua say that almost a week after rain stopped falling people are still clinging to treetops for survival.

BBC's Jon Brain: There are already reports of cholera and typhoid

More than £30m in immediate relief aid is being supplied in the wake of the storm, which left 24,000 people dead or missing, and millions homeless.

Aid is arriving in Honduras and Nicaragua, two of the countries worst affected by Mitch.

But moving it from the capitals to the regions is proving a monumental task with most roads impassable and many bridges washed away.

Tom Gibb in Honduras: "Opening up roads is going to take months"

Isolated villages can only be supplied by air-drops. In Honduras a fuel shortage is threatening the operation. In Nicaragua there is a lack of aircraft.

The waters which washed away shanty towns in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, also destroyed the main food warehouses for the southern half of the country, where some of the worst flooding took place.

Race against time

Sally O'Neill, from the Catholic agency Trocaire in Honduras, said: "We have lots of goods that are suitable for the city that can be distributed and those are being put to fairly good use in the city.

"But for rural areas, we need to be able to drop 100lb sacks of corn, rice and sugar. None of it is available and we are definitely lacking fuel."

In the coming days it will be a race against time to get drinking water and food distributed.

Villages cut off by Mitch have been surviving off nothing but muddy polluted water creating the serious risk of epidemics breaking out.

Some aid has reached remote villages. In San Lorenzo, 120 miles south of Tegucigalpa, where the maize crop has been completely destroyed relief planes have managed to land in the mud.

The refugee siutuation is reaching crisis proportions

But there are many other areas across the country and the region still waiting for the first aid to reach them.

Brian Atwood, administrator for the US Agency for International Development, said: "This is the worst disaster we've seen in this hemisphere."

The immediate job is to reach all the communities and towns still cut off by the floods.

Plans are being devised to set up regional distribution centres from which to shuttle supplies to isolated areas.

Economic woes

As well as the physical damage the Central Americas economy has also been battered.

Tom Gibb in Honduras: "Serious economic blow"

The Honduran subsidiary of Chikita International has announced that it is laying off more than 7,000 banana plantation workers.

The company says it will take until the year 2001 for production to return to pre-storm levels.

Both Nicaragua and Honduras have appealed for help with their potentially crippling foreign debt. Former US President Jimmy Carter echoed the call.

The British International Development Secretary, Clare Short, said she will be pressing the international community to consider special debt relief for Nicaragua and Honduras.

Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Aleman said his country was on its knees.

Correspondent Clive Myrie: "This is year zero"

He called on the international community forgive its $6.5bn debt.

Mr Carter, who was touring the disaster zone, said the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund should write off as much debt for Nicaragua Honduras as is legally possible.

In an interview with the BBC, the Honduran ambassador to Britain, Roberto Flores Bermudez, raised concerns his country's foreign debts.

He said: "We were dedicating 30% of our exports to service the foreign debt and our crops have been devastated. We're talking about a serious problem.