(CNN) -- As offers of international aid poured in, officials worked
                  desperately to prevent starvation and the spread of disease in Central
                  America, where Hurricane Mitch left an estimated 9,000 people dead and
                  wiped out homes and infrastructure.

                  As many as 13,000 people, mostly in Honduras and Nicaragua, were still
                  unaccounted for Wednesday in remote areas beaten by five days of
                  relentless rain from one of the century's strongest storms.

                  The disaster has set back development in Central America by 20 years, the
                  United Nation's World Food Program said Wednesday.

                  The Rome-based WFP said it was delivering food to Nicaragua, Honduras,
                  El Salvador and Guatemala, the four countries worst hit by the storm.

                  "The floods have taken everything with them" in some areas, said Rosa
                  Antolin, the WFP's senior liaison officer for Latin America. "There are no
                  crops to harvest, few wild foods to forage for and no animals for slaughter,"
                  she said.

                  "The destruction is huge," Antolin said. "In just one day the region has been
                  set back 20 years."

                  Mexico launched one of the biggest airlifts in its history, and Europe
                  announced it had approved $8 million in humanitarian aid, adding to $3.5
                  million already given by the United States.

                  The U.S. military has provided about 600 personnel as well as 19
                  helicopters and three transport planes to aid in relief efforts in Honduras and
                  Nicaragua.

                  Relatives in U.S. pack up donations

                  Volunteers in the Honduran and Nicaraguan communities of South Florida
                  worked frantically to pack up donations of food, water and clothes. Many
                  have worked nonstop since the hurricane struck their former homelands.

                  Fanny Quintero worried about her relatives in Chinandega, Nicaragua, after
                  she saw pictures of mile after mile of mud, water and bodies.

                  "I don't know if they are alive or they are hanging off a tree or swimming in the
                   river," Quintero said.

                    The aid was unlikely to be enough due to the number of victims spread
                    across countries where most roads and bridges were damaged or
                    destroyed by the storm.

                   Danger of cholera, malaria

                  Health officials warned of the threat of cholera outbreaks posed by
                  pools of stagnant water littered with rotting bodies. Malaria and
                  dengue fever were also dangers as mosquitoes multiplied in the floodwaters.

                  Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Aleman called the disaster a more significant
                  tragedy than the country's 1972 earthquake, which killed at least 10,000
                  people.

                  "I think this tragedy is of greater consequence than what happened in 1972,"
                  he told a news conference. The earthquake hit mainly the capital, while the
                  floods devastated nearly half the country's territory.

                  In Honduras, its fragile economy and cash crops almost totally ruined,
                  officials said they had counted 5,273 dead and 11,085 missing. They
                  estimated the death toll would reach over 7,000.

                  Another 1,452 people have been confirmed dead in neighboring Nicaragua,
                  where officials denied radio reports of another 1,000 possible dead in rural
                  northern mountains. There were 239 dead in El Salvador and 186 in
                  Guatemala.

                  Woman survives six days at sea

                  A Honduran woman who survived six days at sea after being swept
                  away by the storm provided a rare piece of good news for the
                  devastated region, one of the world's poorest.

                  The unidentified woman, clinging to debris in the Caribbean and drifting
                  in and out of consciousness, was picked up by a British Navy ship
                  Tuesday. Her husband and three children were also swept out to sea,
                  but their fates were unknown.

                  "The capacity to survive in those conditions is absolutely remarkable," a
                  spokesman aboard HMS Sheffield told the BBC.

                  Mexico urges massive relief effort

                  Mexico, responding to appeals for help, said it sent 12 military aircraft,
                  including two Boeing 727s and five Hercules C-130s, and 28 helicopters in
                  order to ferry some 1,260 tons of food and medicine in coming weeks.

                  Two Mexican Cabinet ministers, Social Development Secretary Esteban
                  Moctezuma and Health Secretary Ramon de la Fuente, flew to the area to
                  oversee relief efforts.

                  Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo telephoned President Bill Clinton
                  Tuesday to urge the U.S. leader to assemble a massive multinational relief
                  effort to "avoid the greatest human and social tragedy in Central American
                  history," Zedillo's office said in a statement.

                  Volcano may be declared 'national cemetery'

                  Nicaragua kept a close eye on an erupting volcano, which added to its
                  misery from Mitch. The Cerro Negro volcano was spewing lava, hot gas
                  and flaming rocks just 20 miles from the site where as many as 2,000 people
                  were believed to have been buried in an avalanche of mud triggered by
                  Mitch's rains on the neighboring Casita volcano.

                  Several hundred bodies had been pulled from the mud around the volcano,
                  but Aleman said the government would ask families of the victims if they
                  wanted the rescue stopped and the area declared a "national cemetery"
                  instead.

                  Mourning relatives across the region buried loved ones.

                  "I wanted to go before them," a tearful 81-year-old Carmencita Pascual said
                  Tuesday during the burial of her two granddaughters Elva, 5, and Maria
                  Mux, 7, killed by trees sent crashing down on their home in Guatemala by
                  Mitch on Sunday.

                  After dissipating for a few days, Mitch had recharged and tacked into the
                  Gulf of Mexico, upgraded to a tropical storm again and headed slowly
                  toward Florida. The storm was not expected to gain any more strength,
                  however.

                  Mitch was the fourth most powerful Atlantic hurricane this century when it
                  roared out of the Caribbean last week. It lingered off the Honduran coast for
                  several days, dumping up to two feet of rain each day.

                     Correspondent Pat Neal and Reuters contributed to this report.