Thousands perched on rooftops in Mexico floods

By Alberto Fajardo and Luis Manuel Lopez

VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico (Reuters) - Thousands of people perched on roofs in southern Mexico on Saturday, desperate to be evacuated from flooding caused by heavy rains that has left most of Tabasco state under water and 800,000 people homeless.

Many were set to spend another night on their rooftops, with tens of thousands already crammed into emergency shelters struggling to provide enough hot meals and dry beds.

One group stranded on a roof held a banner reading: "Enough. There are children, pregnant women, sick women. Send the police."

"We need help," one woman told Reuters Television after being rescued by helicopter from the roof of a school in the swampy southern Gulf of Mexico state.

"There are a lot of people up there, there are pregnant women, children. They didn't want to leave their homes but there's now no other option. We've lost everything," she said.

Local navy commander Sergio Lara said 28,000 people had been evacuated as army and navy teams worked through Saturday to airlift people out or reach them by boat, despite problems with fog and rain and with flood victims trying to grab onto hovering helicopters.

"What can complicate things is the weather. (And) today a helicopter almost fell down because of the people desperate to reach provisions," said Jorge Camacho, a civil protection director from the northern state of Nuevo Leon.

Only one death has been reported in Tabasco so far. But in the largely impoverished southern state of Chiapas, local media said four people had died after rain-swollen rivers burst their banks, damaging 5,000 homes and 16 bridges.