"As of today, we have 34 fatalities with more than 37,000 people evacuated from their homes," said Hugo Arevalo, deputy head of the civil emergency committee (COPEC).

Rescue operations were still underway to reach people stranded by floods in the north of the country after the storm slowed to a tropical depression and dissipated over the Caribbean.

Northeastern Honduras took the full brunt of Gamma's driving rains, with some villages in Olancho sustaining damage from mudslides -- three people were killed in Jocomico, a village 350 kilometers (220 miles) from here, local authorities said.

An entire family of six was buried by a mudslide in Locomapa, in Yoro Department, 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of here, a COPEC spokesman said.

UN agencies were helping to distribute food.

Gamma was the 24th named storm in the Atlantic area this hurricane season -- June 1 - November 30, setting an all time record that exhausted the normal alphabetical nomenclature and had to resort to the Greek alphabet.

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