Paraguay man surprises family at his own wake Published duration 19 June 2018

image caption Mr Penayo disappeared from a village near the border town of Pedro Juan Caballero

A man from the small village of Santa Teresa in Paraguay returned home after three days away to find his family mourning a body they thought was his.

Juan Ramón Alfonso Penayo, 20, had last been seen on Thursday leaving the family home on the border with Brazil.

The area is hotly disputed between a number of drug gangs and when Mr Penayo did not return, his family assumed he had met with trouble.

When police found a charred body on Sunday, they concluded it was him.

The family held a wake in the village only for Mr Penayo to turn up and find them grieving over the coffin they thought held his body.

Following Mr Penayo's unscathed return, the still unidentified body was returned to the morgue.

Officials said that if no-one else claimed it, the body would be interred as "NN", the initials given to unidentified people, from the Latin nomen nescio or name unknown.

It is not know where Mr Penayo was or what he was doing during the three days he was missing.