Police deny claim that British journalist and Indigenous expert were found dead in Amazon rainforest

• Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira went missing on June 5 and had previously received threats.
• Phillips' wife said their bodies were found in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

Brazilian police denied a claim by the wife of a British journalist that his body, alongside that of a Brazilian Indigenous expert, were found in the Amazon rainforest.

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira went missing on June 5 while traveling by boat near the town of Atalaia do Norte, the BBC reported.

Alessandra Sampaio, Phillips' wife, said on Monday that both men's bodies had been discovered, the Brazilian news outlet Globo reported. Sampaio said she received a call from the Federal Police of Brazil confirming the location of the bodies, but that they still needed to be examined in order to be identified.

But the Brazilian police denied the report of Phillips and Pereira's deaths, saying they had so far found the men's personal belongings and were investigating "biological material," the BBC reported.

Tom Phillips, the Latin America correspondent for The Guardian, tweeted that a prominent Indigenous leader in the region told him that Indigenous searchers had "NOT confirmed the discovery of two bodies at search site."

Items belonging to the pair were discovered last week, The Guardian reported. On Sunday, police said they found what appeared to be human remains near the town of Atalaia do Norte in the Amazon rainforest.

The BBC cited Indigenous groups that said the men had both received threats. The Guardian reported that Pereira had been threatened by loggers and miners in the area.