The incident took place at a mining complex owned by the Brazilian firm Vale.

THE death toll from massive flooding and landslides in Brazil reached 514 yesterday as renewed rainfall threatened to complicate efforts by rescue teams to reach survivors trapped in isolated areas.

At least 355 people died when walls of earth and water swept away homes in the mountains north of Rio de Janeiro.

Firefighters using heavy machinery, shovels and bare hands dug for survivors today but only found bodies under a mountain of red earth and crushed lodgings - the worst of a spate of mudslides and floods which have killed at least 64 people in south-eastern Brazil.

A small army of rescuers clambered across a mountain of red earth and crushed homes today in a bid to find survivors of a massive mudslide which killed at least 26 people at an island resort in Brazil.