‘The bodies just keep coming’

A photographer who witnessed the aftermath of a massive Brazilian police operation in Rio de Janeiro told the BBC how residents returned with mutilated bodies of the dead.

The bodies “kept coming: 25, 30, 35, 40, 45…” Bruno Ethan told BBC Brasil. Among them are those of police officers.

One of the bodies was decapitated – others were “totally disfigured”, he said. Many also had, as he says, stab wounds.

More than 120 people were killed in an operation against a criminal gang on Tuesday, the deadliest operation in the city.

Bruno Itan told BBC Brasil that he was first alerted to the attack early on Tuesday by residents of the Alemão neighborhood who texted him that there was a shootout.

The photographer headed to Getúlio Vargas Hospital, where the bodies were arriving.

Ethan says the police stopped members of the press from entering the Penha neighborhood where the operation took place.

“Police lined up and said, ‘No press here.’

But Ethan, who grew up in the area, says he managed to make his way into the cordoned off area, where he stayed until the next morning.

He says that on Tuesday night, local residents began searching the hill that separates Penha from the nearby Alemao neighborhood for relatives who have been missing since the police raid.

Residents of the Penha district continued to place the discovered bodies in a square – and Ethan’s photos show the reaction of the people there.

“The brutality of it all affected me very much: the grief of families, mothers fainting, pregnant women, crying, outraged parents,” recalls the photographer.

Rio state’s governor said the large-scale police operation, involving some 2,500 security officers, was aimed at stopping a criminal group known as Comando Vermelho (Red Command) from expanding its territory.

The Rio state government initially maintained that “60 suspects and four police officers” were killed in the operation.

They have since said their “preliminary” count shows 117 “suspects” have been killed.

Rio’s public defender’s office, which provides legal aid to the poor, put the total number of people killed at 132.

According to researchers, Red Command is the only criminal group that has managed to make territorial gains in the state of Rio de Janeiro in recent years.

It is widely considered one of the two largest gangs in the country, along with First Capital Command (PCC), and has a history dating back more than 50 years.

According to Brazilian journalist Rafael Soares, who has covered crime in Rio for years, the Red Command “works like a franchise” with local crime leaders who are part of the gang and become “business partners”.

The gang is mainly involved in drug trafficking, but also in the smuggling of weapons, gold, fuel, alcohol and tobacco.

According to authorities, the gang members were well-armed and police said they were attacked by explosive-laden drones during the attack.

The governor of Rio state, Claudio Castro, described members of the Red Command as “narco-terrorists” and called the four policemen killed in the operation “heroes”.

But the number of people killed in the operation has come under fire, with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights saying it was “appalled”.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Governor Castro defended the police.

“Our intention was not to kill anyone. We wanted to arrest them all alive,” he said.

He added that the situation had escalated because the suspects had retaliated: “This is a consequence of the retaliation they have carried out and the disproportionate use of force by these criminals.”

The governor also said the bodies displayed by local residents in Penha had been “manipulated”.

In a post on X, he said some of them had been stripped of the camouflage clothing he said they were wearing “to shift the blame to the police”.

Felipe Curie of Rio’s civil police also said “camouflage clothing, vests and weapons” had been removed from the bodies and showed footage showing a man cutting camouflage clothing from a corpse.

Supreme Court Justice Alexander de Moraes summoned Governor Castro to a hearing on Monday to explain “in detail” the actions of the police.

With additional reporting by Carol Castro of BBC Brasil in Rio de Janeiro.