Recriminations fly over fire that destroyed 200-year-old Brazilian museum

RIO DE JANEIRO — Smoke rose Monday from the burned-out hulk of Brazil's National Museum, as recriminations flew over who was responsible for a huge fire that destroyed at least part of Latin America's largest collection of historical artifacts and documents.

A few hundred protesters who gathered outside the museum gates tried several times to push into the site, demanding to see the damage and calling on the government to rebuild. Police held the crowd back with pepper spray, tear gas and batons.

The museum's director said a portion of the collection was destroyed and that it was impossible to say yet how much. But the deputy director suggested that the damage could be catastrophic, with most objects in the main building probably lost, except for some meteorites.

The main building, which was once the home of the Brazilian royal family, housed a collection of 20 million items that included Egyptian and Greco-Roman relics and the oldest human skull found in the Western hemisphere, known as Luzia.

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