The state of Rio sees a little more horror, five days after torrential rains.
Rescuers discovered new bodies on Saturday under piles of mud in the city of Petropolis, devastated by floods and landslides that killed at least 146 people, including 26 children, according to the latest official report.
These figures are above all only provisional, as the search continues to find the missing.
The rains fell Tuesday on this city of 300,000 inhabitants, located 60 km north of Rio de Janeiro, transforming the streets into torrents of mud and causing landslides.
Petropolis received more rain than the average for an entire month of February.
houses in ruins
More than 500 firefighters, with helicopters, diggers and sniffer dogs remain mobilized, even if the chances of finding survivors are increasingly slim.
In the Alto Serra district, where nearly 80 houses were engulfed by a mudslide, rescuers transported two bodies in body bags in the morning.
Elsewhere in the center of town, members of a family were in tears as rescuers dug through the ruins of a collapsed house in search of a mother of four.
The bodies of the father and two children have already been found.
As in relief operations during earthquakes, rescuers occasionally blow loud whistles to call for silence and try to detect signs of life.
In this area, authorities say the mountain of mud and rubble is unstable.
Searches are therefore carried out using hand tools and chainsaws in the most difficult to reach places.
“It is impossible to bring heavy machinery up here, we have to work like ants,” explains Roberto Amaral, coordinator of the Petropolis firefighters' special rescue group.
“Scenes of war” according to Bolsonaro
Since the launch of the search operations, twenty-four people have been found alive, mainly in the hours following the disaster.
President Jair Bolsonaro, who flew over the disaster areas on Friday, described "scenes of war".
Above all, the number of missing remains unclear.
The police announced Friday a figure of 218 people, without specifying in particular whether they counted in this total the bodies not yet identified.
For the time being, 91 bodies of the 146 found have been identified, and 90 victims have been buried in the main cemetery of the city, including 44 on Saturday alone.
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