Urbano Gonzalo Pu Lux and his son Fernando Gonzalo Pu clutch a photo of some of their missing loved ones. Picture: David Jeans.

Urbano’s 17 nieces and nephews, two brothers, two sisters and two brothers-in-law perished, and he’s now left identifying parts of their bodies.

“I have no more tears to cry,” Mr Pu Lux said, speaking in Spanish. “Half of my family was lost.”

His family died when a steep hillside collapsed onto the neighbourhood of El Chambray II, just 15km from the centre of Guatemala City. The death toll for the disaster now stands at 220, with 350 people still missing.

Urbano’s teenage son, Fernando, stands by his father wearing a face mask, with the smell in the air almost intolerable. The pair had spent the morning together searching for two of their relatives who are still missing.

He recalled a gut-wrenching search for his niece on Monday.

“Yesterday my niece, they gave us the two legs, and an arm … and at the end (of the day) around 9pm appeared a head,” he said.

“I recognised her quickly and we complete the body.”

Urbano is still searching for the bodies of one of his sisters and his niece. Picture: David Jeans.Source:Supplied

Mr Pu Lux, who was at his home in a nearby neighbourhood of Santa Catarina Pinula, when the landslide happened, said he was not alerted to the disaster until the following morning when news spread throughout the town.

“It’s a moment for me that I can’t explain, I have no words to say it,” he said.

“I definitely passed through two days of sadness and suffering. I cried for two days.

“I don’t want to think that it happened.”

The middle-class neighbourhood of mostly cement-block homes is situated at the bottom of a deep ravine and was almost entirely buried after several days of heavy rain dislodged the opposite hillside.

The entire hillside collapsed on the town. Here excavators are seen removing the dirt, so authorities can recover the bodies. Picture: David Jeans.Source:Supplied

Emergency workers are silent as they file in and out of the excavation site carrying human remains wrapped in rags on metal stretchers. The risk of contamination is high and the smell is overwhelming.

Emergency workers have the grim task of removing and attempting to identify the bodies. Picture: David Jeans.Source:Supplied

Javier Soto, a spokesman for the city’s fire department, said hopes of finding survivors have dissolved and the operation has shifted from rescue to recovery.

Police and ambulance sirens died out with the shift in operation as dozens of trucks removing tonnes of dirt from the site roared up the steep exit road.

Mr Soto said sensors had been installed into the hillside to monitor if the area would be subject to more landslides.

He said DNA samples had been requested by forensic services to assist in identifying bodies.

Widespread emotional trauma has swept through several emergency shelters in the town as families endured the heartbreaking process of identifying and burying loved ones.

Officials described cases where entire families were found in embrace buried under the sludge.

The recovery project has been led by CONRED, the National Coordination for Disaster Prevention, the same organisation that deemed the El Cambray II neighbourhood at risk in 2008 amid concerns of the stability of the hillside.

Rescue workers file silently into the site. Picture: David Jeans.Source:Supplied