Flooding and landslides from the season's first tropical storm have killed at least 150 people and made thousands homeless in Central America, officials say.

Dozens of people were missing and emergency crews struggled to reach isolated communities cut off by washed-out roads and collapsed bridges caused by tropical storm Agatha.

The sun emerged Monday in hardest-hit Guatemala, where officials reported 123 dead and at least 90 missing. In the department of Chimaltenango — a province west of Guatemala City — landslides buried dozens of rural Indian communities and killed at least 60 people, Gov. Erick de Leon said.

"The department has collapsed," de Leon said. "There are a lot of dead people. The roads are blocked. The shelters are overflowing. We need water, food, clothes, blankets — but above all, money."

Residents gather near debris left by a deadly landslide caused by tropical storm Agatha in the el Pedregal neighbourhood of Amatitlan in Guatemala on Monday. (Daniel LeClair/Reuters)

In the tiny village of Parajbei, a slide smothered three homes and killed 11 people.

"It was raining really hard and there was a huge noise," said Vicente Azcaj, 56, who ran outside and saw that a hill had crumbled. "Now everyone is afraid that the same will happen to their homes."

Volunteers from nearby villages worked non-stop since Sunday to recover the bodies in Parajbei, and on Monday they found the last two: brothers, four and eight years old, who were buried under tonnes of dirt, rocks and trees.

Forced out of homes

In all, some 110,000 people were evacuated in Guatemala. Thousands more fled their homes in neighbouring Honduras, where the death toll rose to 17 while meteorologists predicted three more days of rain.

Two dams near the capital of Tegucigalpa overflowed into a nearby river, and officials warned people to stay away from swollen waterways.

"The risk is enormous," Mayor Ricardo Alvarez said.

In El Salvador, as many as 11,000 people were forced out of their homes. The death toll rose to 10 and two others were missing, President Mauricio Funes said Monday night.

About 95 per cent of the country's roads were affected by landslides, but most remained open, Transportation Minister Gerson Martinez said. He said 179 bridges had been wrecked.

Agatha made landfall near the Guatemala-Mexico border Saturday as a tropical storm with winds up to 75 km/h.

EU provides aid

The European Union said Tuesday that it is providing roughly $3.8 million in emergency aid for storm victims in Central America.

The EU said the aid will go toward buying food, water, first aid kits, sanitation supplies and emergency shelters for some 100,000 people.

EU humanitarian aid commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said the EU will "continue to monitor the situation closely, in case further needs arise."

With files from CBC News