Brazil mourns as flood death toll climbs to over 600

Brazilians prayed Sunday 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 keep climbing.

Workers transporting bodies said they feared that the overall death toll could top 1,000 as rescuers reached outlying hamlets.

President Dilma Rousseff declared the three days of mourning, government news agency Agencia Brasil reported. Rio de Janeiro state authorities said their state would 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 defense officials said. Outlying villages also reported deaths.

An estimated 14,000 people were assisted by rescue workers or lost their homes in the Serrana area towns hardest hit about 100 kilometers from coastal Rio, civil defense figures showed.

"I think in the end we'll see more than 1,000 bodies," said a funeral worker in Teresopolis, Mauricio Berlim. "In one village near here, Campo Grande, there were 2,500 homes, and not one 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 in front of an overflowing makeshift morgue inside a Teresopolis church.

At the town's cemetery, a dog curled up at the gravesite of his mistress, a woman named Cristina Maria de Santana, refusing to leave even though she had been buried two days earlier, workers told AFP.

Forecasters have blamed the unusually wet weather on the La Nina phenomenon that has increased rainfall in southeast Brazil.

Separately, Australia's flood crisis shifted to the country's far south Sunday, with more than 1,400 homes swamped by a record deluge. Also, the death toll from more than two weeks of heavy rains in the central and southern Philippines has risen to 51, disaster officials said Sunday.

AFP