17 killed in Brazil mine mudslide

Rio De Janeiro:  A dam burst at a mining waste site in Brazil, unleashing a deluge of thick, red toxic mud that engulfed a village and killed at least 17 people, an official said.
More than 50 were injured in the disaster in southeastern Minas Gerais state yesterday, said Adao Severino Junior, fire chief in the city of Mariana.

The number of missing looks set to surpass 40 but this is not official yet, he added. Television footage showed a torrent of muck several hundred metres long that had swamped houses and ripped off their roofs.

The mud reached the intact roofs of some houses, atop of which stranded people waited to be rescued. Some homes seemed to have been swept hundreds of meters by the rushing wall of mud.

The village of Bento Rodrigues near the dam is practically buried, the fire chief said.”The situation is grim. It is dark. There is a lot of mud,” Severino said. “There is no way to survive under that material.”