Brazilians in Rio favela line up bodies after city’s deadliest police raid

Rio de Janeiro: After a massive police raid on a notorious drug gang, residents of a Rio de Janeiro favela spent all night collecting bodies in trucks from inside and around their urban community and then laying them down in a central square.

By early morning Wednesday, at least 50 bodies of mostly young men without shirts lay on the ground in Penha, one of two sites targeted in Rio’s deadliest police operation, which is being decried by critics as Brazil’s latest example of the excessive use of force.

Hundreds of resident and family members of victims surrounded the bodies, some crying while others screamed “massacre” and later chanted “justice,” according to an AP journalist at the scene.

The raid Tuesday by 2,500 police and soldiers in helicopters, armored vehicles and on foot left at least 64 people dead, including 60 suspected gang members and four policemen, according to state Gov. Claudio Castro and police.

Residents said they believed the tally was higher and that some of the bodies they were collecting were not yet likely to have been included. Many were found in a wooded ridge near the urban community, they said. By late Wednesday morning, forensic authorities had retrieved the bodies. The state government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Local activist Raull Santiago said he was part of a team that found about 15 bodies before dawn.

“We saw executed people: shot in the back, shots to the head, stab wounds, people tied up. This level of brutality, the hatred spread - there’s no other way to describe it except as a massacre,” Santiago said.

Castro said on Tuesday that Rio was at war against “narco-terrorism,” a term that echoed the Trump administration in its campaign against drug smuggling in Latin America.