Five members of the same family including children aged 6 and 3 have died after their car was found buried in a mudslide as storms rocked the region they were driving through.

The incident took place in the municipality of Brumadinho, which is located in the south-eastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, as storms and floods battered the region on Saturday, 8th January.

The five people who died in the car have been named as Geovane Vieira Ferreira, 42, Henrique Alexandrino dos Santos, 41, Deisy Lucia Cardoso Alexandrino Santos, 40, Vitor Cardoso, 6, and Ana Alexandrino Santos, 3.

The bodies have been sent to the Institute of Forensic Medicine for autopsy.

Local media reported that the car was dragged through mud for about 400 metres (1,312 feet) and was “completely destroyed”, with the girl being thrown from the vehicle.

Images show the massive mudslide having run down the side of a hill upon which many luxurious houses with swimming pools appear to have been built.

The family members were reportedly heading to Belo Horizonte International Airport when they disappeared, prompting a large-scale search for them.

The last known image of the family shows their car passing through a tollbooth on the BR-040 motorway at around 3pm the day they disappeared.

The mudslide that buried the family’s car is also the same one that is thought to have destroyed an apartment block in the area, with the landslide reportedly dragging the property over a distance of several metres. No other injuries have been reported in the landslide.

Brumadinho is the municipality where the notorious Brumadinho dam disaster that killed 270 people took place, in January 2019.