MISSING IN AMAZON
Dom Phillips missing: Human remains found in search for Brit journalist who vanished in Amazon as fisherman arrested
HUMAN remains have been found in the hunt for a missing British journalist and his guide.
Veteran foreign correspondent Dom Phillips, 57, vanished in the Amazon along with Bruno Pereira, 41, an expert on Brazil's indigenous tribes.
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Search teams have now found "apparently human" organic material in a river where the pair both vanished on Sunday in the Amazon.
Local fisherman Amariledo ‘Pelado’ da Costa has been arrested over the disappearances and blood was discovered on a tarp in his wooden boat.
Police said they have collected genetic material from the missing duo to compare with the blood.
Cops have been granted an extra 30 days to keep da Costa detained as they continue to investigate.
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He was taken into custody on Tuesday and was charged with illegal possession of drugs and restricted ammunition.
His lawyer denies he had any role in the men's disappearance.
Police have indicated that da Costa was one of the last people to see Philips and Pereira on Sunday at around 6am.
Both men vanished after visiting the fisherman's riverside community of São Gabriel.
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Detectives were given an extra time for questions due to him potentially being involved in the "heinous crime" of murder and hiding bodies.
Brazilian media claims witnesses saw da Costa with a shotgun just before the men vanished.
And another witness described him as a "very dangerous man".
Blood found on his boat is being probed to find out if is animal or human.
Police are also probing an area of "overturned earth".
Emergency official Geonivan Maciel: "It's as if someone had dug something at the site, buried something there.
"We're going to carry out a scan of the bottom to verify.
"We can't say there's definite evidence, but we're going to see if there's something there that could identify something about the two missing men."
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Cops are focusing their investigation of poachers and illegal fishermen in the area.
Pereira often clashed with these groups as he organized indigenous patrols of the local reservation.
Witnesses said they last saw Phillips, a freelance reporter who has written for the Guardian and The Washington Post, on Sunday.
His companion Pereira, an expert on local tribes, had been a senior official with government indigenous agency Funai.
The two men were on a reporting trip in the remote jungle area on the border between Peru and Colombia that is home to the world's largest number of uncontacted indigenous people.
The wild and lawless region has lured cocaine-smuggling gangs, along with illegal loggers, miners and hunters.
The pair's disappearance has echoed globally, with Brazilian icons from soccer great Pele to singer Caetano Veloso joining politicians, environmentalists and human rights activists in urging President Jair Bolsonaro to step up the search for them.
After criticism that the government had dragged its feet in the crucial first days of the case, Bolsonaro told the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles on Friday that the Brazilian armed forces were working "tirelessly" to find the two men.
The streets of Atalaia do Norte, the largest riverside town near where the men were last seen, have grown busy in recent days with soldiers in camouflaged trucks, along with the distant sound of helicopters absent earlier this week.
By Friday, some 150 soldiers had been deployed via riverboats to hunt for the missing men and interview locals.
Indigenous search teams have been looking for the pair since Sunday.
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Boats carrying police and firefighters are conducting dives in a murky vegetated area along the edge of the Itacoa River.
And canoes are being used to search the shallows for any trace of the two men.
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