Bangkok Post – At least 10 dead in landslides in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO – Landslides caused by torrential rains in southeastern Brazil have killed at least 10 people, emergency services in Minas Gerais state said Sunday.

Nine people died in the town of Ipatinga, where 80 millimeters (3.1 inches) of rain fell in an hour on Saturday evening, the mayor’s office said.

Firefighters have recovered the body of an eight-year-old boy from the rubble of a house destroyed by a landslide.

Another landslide swept away everything in its path along a road on the side of a hill in the Bethania neighborhood.

AFP images from the scene showed rubble of houses sticking out of the mud.

As of Sunday evening, one person from the area remained missing, but four of the person’s family members were rescued.

A body was also found in the nearby town of Santana do Paraiso.

The governor of Minas Gerais state, Romeu Zema, sent a message of “solidarity with the victims” in a statement on social media.

Latin America’s largest country was rocked by several extreme weather events last year.

Massive flooding caused by days of record rainfall killed more than 180 people in the south of the country in April and May.

Brazil also suffered from a historic drought linked to climate change, which set the stage for the worst wildfires in 17 years that destroyed large swathes of the Amazon rainforest.