"Day had yet to break over Vila Cruzeiro but already dozens of corpses were splayed out along the favela's main drag after more than 130 people were killed during the deadliest police operation in Rio's history: grotesquely disfigured, blood-smeared bodies that had been dragged out of nearby forests and dumped on blue tarpaulins and black plastic sheets covering the street."
"I've brought 53 down myself there must be another 12 or 15 up there in the bush, said Erivelton Vidal Correia, the head of the local residents' association, bleary-eyed from a sleepless night spent hauling bullet-riddled local men down from the hills. Correia broke down as he described his relentless nocturnal hunt for the dead after Rio suffered what is being called one of the biggest police massacres in modern Brazilian history."
A pre-dawn operation by around 2,500 officers struck Vila Cruzeiro and surrounding favelas, leaving dozens of bodies strewn along the main street and in nearby hills. Local residents and association leaders hauled bullet-riddled corpses from the bush and delivered them to a square where government collectors later removed them. Rio officials initially reported at least 64 deaths including four police officers; the public prosecutor later put the toll at 132. The scene included grotesquely disfigured, blood-smeared bodies on tarpaulins and plastic sheets. The scale of fatalities exceeded the Carandiru prison massacre of 1992.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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