At least 30 people have been killed in two days of intense storms in southeastern Brazil, the Minas Gerais state civil defence office said.
Seventeen people are also missing, seven injured, and some 3,500 have been forced out of their homes following a series of landslides and building collapses, civil defence officials said.
Television footage showed images of overflowing rivers, flooded neighbourhoods and trees and utility poles knocked over by the rushing water.
Several highways have also been cut by the flooding, and scores of bridges have been knocked out.
Most of the victims were killed in landslides or buried in destroyed homes.
At least two children were listed among the dead.
The heavy rain and flooding is also hitting the nearby states of Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo.
Rainfall in the region has been the heaviest since records were first kept 110 years ago, the National Institute of Meteorology said.
In one 24-hour period, the Minas Gerais state capital Belo Horizonte recorded 172 millimetres (almost seven inches) of rain.
Authorities warn that the danger of landslides remains high, especially in the Belo Horizonte area.
The deluge coincided with the first anniversary of the dam collapse in the Minas Gerais town of Brumadinho that killed 270 people.
Meanwhile, Brazilian miner Vale SA has raised the emergency level at the Sul Inferior dam at its Gongo Soco mine in Barao de Cocais, in the southern state of Minas Gerais, after heavy rainfall eroded the structure’s reservoir.
“As a result of unusually heavy rain, Vale reinforced the number of field teams on standby for any eventual emergencies,” Vale said in a securities filing late on Saturday.
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