Search crews found clothes and other belongings of the two men who went missing in the Amazon last week. Authorities are also testing blood from a suspect’s boat and human remains found elsewhere.
A British journalist and a Brazilian expert on Indigenous peoples have now been missing deep in the Amazon rainforest for more than a week, and increasing signs suggest that the two men may not be found alive, the New York Times reports.
Brazilian authorities said late last week that they found human remains in the area where the men were last seen as well as blood on a suspect’s boat, and that the samples were being tested. Then, over the weekend, the authorities found belongings of the two men, including clothes, a sandal, a bag and a health card.
“I pray to God that they find them alive, but the evidence suggests otherwise at the moment,” President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil told a local media outlet on Monday.
Dom Phillips, a freelance writer for the British news organization The Guardian, and Bruno Araújo Pereira, an expert on Indigenous groups who has done extensive work in the Amazon, were last seen on June 5, while traveling in a boat on the Itaquaí River in the northern Brazilian state of Amazonas, near the border with Peru.
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