Pro-impeachment supporters celebrated their victory, as Wyre Davies reports
Following a defeat in the lower house of Congress, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff has vowed to keep on fighting against moves to impeach her, Attorney General Eduardo Cardozo has said.
On Sunday, lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favour of a motion to impeach her on claims she manipulated government accounts.
She has denied the allegations and described the move as a "coup".
The motion will now go to the upper house.
A vote in the Senate is expected in May, and reports suggest most senators will vote against the president.
If that vote goes against her, she will be suspended while the Senate proceeds with the impeachment trial.
'Not disheartened'
Mr Cardozo said Ms Rousseff would not give up.
"The president will not be disheartened and will not stop fighting," he said.
"If someone thinks she is going to bow down now, they are fooling themselves," Mr Cardozo added.
• Who will lead Brazil if Dilma Rousseff is impeached?
Ms Rousseff is expected to make her first public remarks about the vote later on Monday.
How big was the blow?
Impeachment supporters netted 367 votes in the lower house of Congress, well above the 342 they needed.
The "no" camp took 137 votes, seven deputies abstained and two did not show for the ballot.
Victory celebrations were loud and colourful among the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who watched the vote live on huge TV screens on city streets across the country.
• The vote as it happened
What comes next?
Early next month, the Senate will vote on whether to put the president on trial.
If the vote passes, she will be suspended and replaced by Vice-President Michel Temer.
A Senate trial could last up to six months. If at the end of it two-thirds of senators were to vote to impeach, Dilma Rousseff would be out of office for good.
Temer as president? Analysis by Daniel Gallas, BBC News, Brazil
Vice-President Michel Temer grinned as he watched the televised vote in Brasilia
Most Brazilians would be forgiven if they saw a picture of Michel Temer and did not recognise him. Yet this 75-year-old law professor may soon be leading a country amid its most serious political and economic crisis in decades - if President Rousseff loses the battle against impeachment.
Mr Temer's most notable achievement as a politician has been to help the country's biggest political party - the PMDB - form coalitions with every president in the past two decades. He is currently party president.
Rather like his party, which has not held outright power for over two decades, Mr Temer has always been a kingmaker, but never king.
Who could lead Brazil?
What is Rousseff accused of doing?
Dilma Rousseff says she has done nothing criminal
Brazilian governments are required to meet budget surplus targets set in Congress, which investors regard as a measure of economic health.
Ms Rousseff is accused of allowing creative accounting techniques involving loans from public banks to the treasury, which artificially enhanced the budget surplus.
She argues that she did nothing criminal but her opponents are unforgiving.
"We fought a lot to sack this corrupt government, which destroyed our industry, jobs and left chaos in all social classes," demonstrator Marisa Cardamone, 75, told AFP news agency in Sao Paulo.
Why is she so unpopular?
An effigy of Ms Rousseff portrays her in a prison uniform
Today, Dilma Rousseff presents a sorry contrast to her popular predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whom she succeeded in 2011.
Critics say she took an arrogant attitude to Congress and her economic policies were misguided, even if she enjoyed some credit as an honest politician in a political world mired by corruption investigations.
• How it all went so wrong
Who are the alternatives?
Vice-President Temer could face impeachment himself over the same accusations as those put to Ms Rousseff.
Two other possible successors, lower house Speaker Eduardo Cunha and Renan Calheiros, face corruption allegations.
The three men, who all deny the allegations against them, are from the PMDB - the largest party in the coalition, which abandoned Ms Rousseff to support the impeachment.
"I'm happy because I think Dilma had to go but I'm also sad that it came to this and also really worried that the next president could be even worse,'' Patricia Santos, a 52-year-old small business owner among the demonstrators outside Congress, told AP.
Dangerous days for Brazil?
The metal wall in Brasilia has become a symbol of the country's divisions
There is no suggestion that the fight promised by the Workers' Party "in the streets and in the Senate" will be anything but political, though Brazilians are certainly bitterly divided.
Passions are so high on both sides that the authorities erected a makeshift 2m (6.5ft) high metal wall, stretching for 1km (0.6 miles), to keep thousands of rival demonstrators apart outside Congress in Brasilia.
Ms Rousseff and her allies have accused their opponents of mounting a coup. "This fascist congress wants to lead a coup d'etat against Brazil's democracy but they will not succeed," one protester told AP.
Impeachment vote was broadcast live on TV and closely watched by millions of Brazilians
The front page of Brazil's right-leaning paper O Globo carries a photo of MPs celebrating under the headline "Close to the End". A headline in the left-leaning online magazine Revista Forum reminds readers the impeachment still has to clear the Senate.
In the hours after the vote (central Brazil is three hours behind GMT), two of the top hash tags on Twitter in Brazil were #AlutaComecou ("the struggle begins"), used by both sides, and #ValeuCunha ("Thank you, Cunha") - addressed to the parliamentary speaker.
There was no immediate comment from the president herself but her chief of staff, Jacques Wagner, accused parliament of "threatening to interrupt 30 years of democracy in the country", which was under military rule until 1985.
Are the Olympics likely to be affected?
The Olympic aquatics venue in Rio
Olympics chiefs say preparations for the Games in Rio this August are on track despite Brazil's political and economic troubles.
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