A woman has stunned onlookers by emerging from a deadly mudslide in Peru as a new round of unusually heavy rain has left at least a dozen people dead.
The intense rain and mudslides during the past three days have wrought havoc around the Andean nation and caught residents in Lima, a desert capital of 10 million, by surprise.
In one of the more dramatic incidents, stunned residents watched and took out phone cameras as a woman escaped after being swept into an avalanche of mud, wood debris and farm animals south of downtown Lima.
Evangelina Chamorro, 32, had just dropped her two daughters at school and was feeding her pigs alongside her husband when they were pulled into a landslide.
Armando Rivera, Chamorro's husband, told RPP radio they climbed a tree but the trunk broke.
They held on to each other's hands but Chamorro lost his grip.
She emerged near a bridge, lifting herself from a current of planks and walking toward the shore covered head-to-toe in mud.
"There's a person there!" an onlooker cried out.
Chamorro collapsed as she reached land and was quickly carried by several men to an ambulance.
She suffered only minor injuries.
The mudslide in the Punta Hermosa district left two people dead, including a six-year-old girl.
Authorities said they expected the rain caused by El Nino, which generates a warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, to continue for another two weeks.
Officials say 62 people have died and 12,000 homes have been destroyed in storms so far in 2017.
In Lima, the swelling Huaycoloro river swept away two trucks and threatened to destroy a bridge.
Seven of the nation's most dangerous criminals were temporarily transported to another facility after a river near the prison threatened to overflow.
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said authorities were prepared to provide shelter and relief to those left homeless.
