TERESOPOLIS - Brazilians yesterday prayed for victims of devastating floods near Rio de Janeiro after the death toll from the natural disaster rose to at least 610 and was predicted to climb again.
Emergency workers in the disaster zone, in the Serrana region just north of Rio, were overwhelmed by the body count. Refrigerator trucks had to be brought in to store corpses.
Workers transporting bodies said they feared the overall death toll could top 1000 as rescuers reached outlying hamlets.
President Dilma Rousseff declared three days of mourning. Rio de Janeiro state authorities said their state will observe a full week of mourning starting today.
As of late Saturday, the death toll stood at 610 people, with the worst-hit towns being Teresopolis, Nova Friburgo and Petropolis, civil defence officials said.
The single hardest hit town was Nova Friburgo, where 274 people were killed. Nearby Teresopolis had 263 dead, 55 were killed in Petropolis and 18 lost their lives in Sumidouro, officials said.
Funeral worker in Teresopolis, Mauricio Berlim, said: "In one village near here, Campo Grande, not one home is left standing."
Authorities also made an urgent appeal for donations of blood, bottled water, food and medicine.
At least four refrigerated trucks were parked on the front of an overflowing makeshift morgue inside a Teresopolis church.
Body recovery efforts have been hampered by tons of mud that, in some cases, have cut villages off and made them accessible only by helicopter - but flights were limited by persistent rain that hindered visibility in the rough terrain.
At least a dozen remote hamlets remained out of touch, and one witness reported seeing a group of people buried in their car by a river of reddish mud.
The disaster, which media called the worst tragedy of its kind in Brazil's history, struck sleeping families on Wednesday before dawn.
Municipal official Solange Sirico told Brazilian television there was a risk of epidemics breaking out as bodies decomposing in the tropical heat mingled with water runoff.
Meanwhile, the death toll from more than two weeks of heavy rains in the central and southern Philippines has risen to 51, disaster officials said yesterday, as authorities stepped up their search for 16 people missing at sea.
Unexploded mines planted during Sri Lanka's Tamil separatist war may have shifted during recent floods, officials said yesterday, as residents started to return to their badly damaged homes and farms.
More than one million people were initially displaced and 37 confirmed dead in a week of unusually heavy monsoon rains.