Floods ravage southeastern Brazil and kill 46 as rescuers race to find the missing

JUIZ DE FORA, Brazil (AP) — Families of those killed in the devastating floods in southeastern Brazil began burying the dead on Wednesday, as the death toll climbed to at least 46 in the state of Minas Gerais.

All the victims found so far are in the cities of Juiz de Fora and Uba, about 310 kilometers (192 miles) north of Rio de Janeiro. Some 21 people are still missing and more than 3,000 residents have been forced to leave their homes as of Wednesday afternoon, according to Minas Gerais’s fire department.

Among the dead was 11-year-old Bernardo Lopes Dutra killed after the rain caused his house to collapse.

“It’s a tragedy that no one was expecting,” his father, Ricardo Dutra, said at the funeral in Juiz de Fora. He described Bernardo as “a boy with a big heart who, in his own way, touched everyone around him.” Dutra's wife and daughter were still in a hospital.

The Rev. Ananias Simões, the pastor at the church that Dutra and his family regularly attended in Juiz de Fora, said the building has been turned into a temporary shelter.

“We're doing what we can, collecting food, water. We're in a war situation,” Simões said.

Dário Tibério, a 41-year-old truck driver, decided to leave his house along with his family for fear of collapse. He found refuge at the church, while he waits on authorities to say his home is risk-free.

“There's a danger that the mud and earth can come and bury us along with the debris. We have this feeling of insecurity,” he said.

The streets of Juiz de Fora, a city of 560,000, were covered in mud as authorities feared more landslides. Life in neighboring Uba, with its 107,000 residents, came to a stop. Classes were suspended in both cities, their mayors said.

Juiz de Fora's City Hall said in a statement that around 600 families living in endangered areas were about to be relocated to local schools improvised as shelters and that the city experienced double the rain expected for February. Mayor Margarida Salomão said at least 20 landslides had been reported since the torrential rain began Monday evening.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on his social media channels Tuesday that security forces have been deployed on rescue missions and are providing immediate assistance to the population affected by the rain.

Scientists say extreme weather is happening more frequently due to human-caused climate change.

Flooding in Brazil's southern Rio Grande do Sul state in May 2024 led to the deaths of at least 185 people and ravaged nearly everything needed for economic activity, from local shops to factories, farms and ranches. Financial losses were above 10 billion reais ($1.9 billion).

Back in Minas Gerais, Flávio Clemente Rodrigues, a 46-year-old in Juiz de Fora whose house partially caved in due to the heavy rains, lamented the lack of assistance from public authorities to prevent the consequences of the heavy rains, such as the construction of barriers.

“We never had support from the public authorities to help us with anything,” said Rodrigues, who lives in the heavily-affected Parque Burnier neighborhood of Juiz de Fora.

His stepson Samuel Goncalves, 17, was preparing to take a shower when he heard a loud sound resulting from falling rocks. He managed to escape, but his bedroom is now full of debris.

“When I came to see, everything had fallen: the slope back there, the tree was cracking, the slope collapsing, the mud sliding down,” Goncalves said. “It’s really sad and worrying.”

Hughes reported from Rio de Janeiro.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Vilma Goncalves da Silva, center left, and her son Samuel Goncalves, look out from their front door the damage caused by flooding near the affected areas where homes collapsed in the Parque Burnier neighborhood of Juiz de Fora, in Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Residents watch firefighters and civil defense workers at the site where homes collapsed due to heavy rains and severe flooding in the Parque Burnier neighborhood of Juiz de Fora in Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Ricardo Dutra, center, the father of 11-year-old Bernardo Lopes, a victim of heavy rains and flooding, is comforted by his son's friends during the burial of his child in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, Brazil Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Cemetery workers lower the coffin of the remains of 11-year-old Bernardo Lopes, a victim of heavy rains and flooding in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, Brazil Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Collapsed homes sit after heavy rains and severe flooding in the Parque Burnier neighborhood of Juiz de Fora in Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Firefighters recover a body from the site where homes collapsed during heavy rains and severe flooding in the Parque Burnier neighborhood of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

CAIRO (AP) — Iranians began to regain internet access on Wednesday after authorities ended a monthslong shutdown. But users said service was slow and spotty in some areas, with apps like YouTube and Instagram heavily restricted, as they were before the cutoff began during nationwide protests in January.

Authorities justified the outage as a military imperative after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Their decision to lift some restrictions this week came as negotiators appeared to be closing in on a more permanent truce. But many Iranians feared access could be cut off again at a moment's notice.

Internet tracking company Netblocks said Iran’s connectivity, which measures the ability of devices to connect to the internet, is at around 86% of capacity from before the cutoff. Internet analysis firm Kentik said internet traffic, which measures the amount of data transferred and is a good illustration of usage, was at around 40%.

Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity analyst, said there were still widespread disruptions. “It's too early to say the shutdown is over,” he wrote on X.

Iran’s roughly 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns. Young people with online careers saw their incomes evaporate. Job losses and the closure of online businesses added to the war's steep economic costs.

The cutoff made it difficult for Iranian families to communicate through months of unrest and war. At some points, phone lines were also cut off, though they were later restored.

A woman living in Tehran said that for months she was barely able to speak to her sons living abroad. She couldn't believe authorities had restored access, saying she had assumed they would find some justification to prolong the outage.

A taxi driver said service was restored but weak. He expressed hope it would improve so he could use messaging apps with family and friends. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Prices spiked during the shutdown, with residents in Tehran at times paying around $7.50 per gigabyte. Prices are back down to around $2.25 for 30 gigabytes, roughly where they were before the protests.

Even then, Iran tightly controlled access to popular social media sites, leading many to rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs. The cost of those workarounds soared during the shutdown, making them unaffordable for many as the economy was battered.

Businesses have started reappearing online, announcing their return with posts on sites like Instagram and Telegram.

A gamer and tech influencer in the central city of Isfahan said the shutdown had caused him to lose a lot of his audience on YouTube and Instagram, where he had spent years building up a large following.

“All my views and interactions are way down. I’ve been erased from the algorithm,” he said in a voice note sent by WhatsApp, adding that his internet connection was still slower than before the shutdown.

“The situation is such that many content producers have had their income reduced to zero, have moved on to other jobs, or have been forced to sell their equipment to survive,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests that were eventually stamped out in a violent crackdown. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands detained.

That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout after the start of the war, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials.

The government faced criticism for the prolonged shutdown, which caused even more harm to an economy devastated by inflation, strikes on key industries and a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.

The internet cutoff cost an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper last month. About 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity, according to Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi.

Iranians still had access to a national net, but that has a far narrower reach, and users complained of poor service and heavy censorship. Senior government officials are given SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure, the government expanded access to the SIM cards to some professions during the shutdown.

A woman checks her smartphone while sitting on a bench along a sidewalk in northern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)