Mudslide death toll hits 500 in Rio de Janeiro

The death toll in Brazil's flood disaster climbed towards 500 today as survivors used their bare hands to dig for relatives.

Funerals were being held constantly and hundreds of graves were being dug. Vitor da Costa Soares, who runs the cemetery at Teresopolis, near Rio de Janeiro, said: "We'll make room. We have to. We'll stay up here until midnight if we can, and we'll be here at 6am tomorrow."

At least 476 people were confirmed dead after heavy rains unleashed torrential mudslides before dawn on Wednesday, burying people as they slept.

The remote Campo Grande area of Teresopolis, where most homes were washed away, is now accessible only by a five-mile hike through the jungle. Families pulled the bodies of loved ones from the mud and covered them with blankets.

Conceicao Salomao, a doctor at a makeshift refuge inside a gym in Teresopolis, said about 750 people were staying there and about 1,000 people had sought treatment in the past day. One danger she worried about was leptospirosis, a waterborne bacterial disease.