Backpack, laptop found where pair went missing in Amazon
ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil (AP) — Divers from a local Brazilian firefighters corps found a backpack and laptop Sunday in the remote Amazon area where Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and freelance British journalist Dom Phillips went missing a week ago, firefighters said.
The backpack was tied to a tree that was half-submerged, a firefighter with the fire corps in Amazonas state told reporters in Atalaia do Norte, the closest city to the search area, which is near the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory. It is the flood season in the region and part of the forest is flooded.
Officers with the Federal Police brought the items by boat to Atalaia do Norte later in the afternoon.
The local Indigenous association, with which Pereira was working at the time of his disappearance, confirmed that firefighters’ divers found a backpack but said it could not immediately say to whom it belonged. The area has only poor riverside communities, where equipment like laptops are rare.
Orlando Possuelo, a member of the Indigenous association, known as UNIVAJA, told reporters that Indigenous volunteers also found a tarp that had been in the boat used by the missing men and a T-shirt that belonged to Pereira near the site of the backpack.
