Rescue workers using heavy machinery dug for bodies and survivors after a torrent of mud dislodged by heavy rain ravaged a hillside slum near Rio de Janeiro, burying dozens of residents.
The worst rains in 40 years, which started on Monday, triggered close to 200 mudslides that pulverised shacks in hillside communities, killing at least 180 people and leaving thousands homeless in and around Brazil's second-biggest city.
Search teams pulled out 12 bodies and rescued 21 people from the wreckage of houses swept away by the large slide late on Wednesday that buried about 50 houses in the Bumba Hill slum in the city of Niteroi, across a bay from Rio.
The mudslide wiped out all traces of the houses, churches and stores in its path, leaving rubble and a swath of black earth amid the surrounding tropical forest.
Soil was piled as high as a two-story building at the bottom of the hill. The hillside had previously been a garbage dump, making the neighbourhood more vulnerable to collapse and underlining the precarious living conditions of more than a million slum dwellers in the Rio area.
Rescuers said the chances of finding more survivors was slim because of the lack of air pockets in the mud.
Reuters