landslides And floods that hit the southeast Brazil claimed the lives of at least 54 people, according to the latest official casualty count released by the authorities on Friday, the 6th day of search and rescue operations, while the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Francis, said he was praying for the victims.

“I send you my prayers, God bless you,” the pontiff said in Spanish in a video uploaded to social media by Vatican News, the official news agency of the Roman Catholic Church.

At the end of last week, more than 680 mm of rain fell in San Francisco in 24 hours. Sebastianoseaside resort 200 km from San. Pauloin other words, rainfall twice the average monthly rainfall.

“So far, we have confirmed 54 deaths,” the Shan State Governor’s office said. Pauloindicating that “16 women, 15 men and 15 children” have been identified so far.

The previous official tally, released Thursday night, was 50 dead.

Brazilian authorities estimate that about 30 people are still missing, and searches continue in the hardest-hit areas.

Nearly 4,000 people were forced to leave their homes.

The destruction, the abundance of this nature, which the largest state of Latin America has experienced in recent years, is associated by experts with the consequences of climate change and uncontrolled urbanization.

9.5 million Brazilians live in areas at risk from landslides or floods, many of them in favelas -slum- lacking basic infrastructure such as drainage, the National Disaster Watch and Warning Center (Centro Nacional de Monitoring e Alerts de catastrophes Natural, SEMADEN).

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}