By Dan Collyns
BBC News, Lima
**Authorities in Peru have ordered the airlift of nearly 2,000 tourists stranded by heavy rains in the country’s top attraction, Machu Picchu.**Days of heavy rains triggered up to 40 landslides, one of which blocked the railway connecting the Inca ruins with the city of Cuzco.
Two people are reported to have died when a mudslide destroyed their home.
Peru’s tourism minister said the armed forces would be deployed to airlift tourists who had been unable to leave.
Martin Perez said the stranded tourists would be gradually evacuated, beginning with children and the elderly.
Swollen rivers
The railway was blocked by a landslide on Saturday, one of many which have blocked roads and destroyed homes in the region.
Two people, one of them a baby, were killed when their home was hit by a mudslide.
Hundreds of hectares of crops, mostly maize, were destroyed when rivers broke their banks.
The authorities in Cuzco have declared a state of emergency in the south-eastern region of the country where they say up to 3,000 people have had their homes destroyed by floods and landslides.
The historic centre of Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire has also been damaged.
A colonial-era house has collapsed and last week part of the Sacsayhuaman, the Inca fortress which flanks the city, was damaged by the intense rains.