🔗 Share this article

Bruno Itan

A photographer who documented the results of an extensive security raid in the metropolitan area has described how local people came back with badly injured victims of people who lost their lives.

The victims "kept coming: the count kept increasing", Bruno Itan described. The total contained law enforcement personnel.

One individual was found without a head - others were "totally disfigured", he said. Numerous victims displayed evidence of stab wounds.

In excess of 120 victims lost their lives during the security action targeting an illegal organization - the most lethal operation the municipality has seen.

Bruno Itan reported that residents first notified him concerning the action early on Tuesday by local people of the Alemão neighbourhood, who contacted him alerting him there was a shoot-out.

The reporter traveled to a local medical facility, where the casualties were coming in.

Itan explained that the police stopped members of the press from going into the affected area, where the operation were taking place.

"Police officers established a perimeter and announced: 'Media representatives doesn't get past here'."

But Itan, who spent his childhood in the area, stated he managed to enter into the restricted zone, where he stayed until dawn.

He explained that Tuesday night, area inhabitants commenced searching the hillside that borders the Penha neighborhood from the nearby Alemão neighbourhood for loved ones whose whereabouts were unknown since the police raid.

Residents of the Penha neighbourhood arranged the located casualties in a public space - and Itan's photos reveal the reaction of the gathered crowd.

"The brutality of it all impacted me a lot: the sorrow of relatives, women collapsing, pregnant wives, sobbing, furious relatives," the eyewitness remembered.

Bruno Itan

The state leader of Rio state stated that the extensive law enforcement effort with approximately 2,500 law enforcement members was aimed at halting an illegal organization known as Comando Vermelho from expanding its territory.

At first, local officials stated that sixty alleged criminals along with four officers" lost their lives in the operation.

Officials subsequently stated that their "preliminary" count suggests that 117 alleged criminals were fatally injured.

Rio's public defender's office, that offers legal help to disadvantaged individuals, has estimated the total number of fatalities at 132.

According to researchers, Red Command stands as the sole illegal faction which in recent years has been able to make territorial gains in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

It is widely considered one of the two largest gangs in the country, alongside another major gang, featuring a timeline extending half a century.

According to correspondent a specialist, who has long reported on crime in Rio for years, the gang "works as a system" with local criminal leaders affiliating with the group and serving as "commercial associates".

The gang engages primarily in narcotics distribution, while also dealing in guns, valuable minerals, fuel, beverages cigarettes.

Based on official reports, organization members are well armed and officials reported that during the raid, they faced assaults using drone-delivered explosives.

The official of Rio state, the political leader, labeled organization participants as "narcoterrorists" and described the four police officers fatally injured in the action as "heroes".

However, the count of casualties in the security action has faced scrutiny with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressing they felt "horrified".

At a news conference on Wednesday, the state leader supported law enforcement.

"There was no objective to cause fatalities. We intended to arrest them all alive," he declared.

He further explained that the situation intensified due to the alleged criminals had retaliated: "It occurred of the retaliation they implemented and the overwhelming response from the gang members."

The state leader further reported that the bodies displayed by locals in the area were "altered".

Through a message on social media, he said that some of them had been stripped of military-style attire which he claimed they wore "in order to shift blame to security forces".

A police official from the police department further reported that military attire, vests, and firearms" had been removed from the victims and showed footage appearing to show a man cutting camouflage clothing {off a corpse