Brazil

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Tuesday that the police operation against a powerful criminal faction in Rio that left 121 dead was “a massacre.”

“There was a massacre and I think it is important to verify the conditions under which it occurred,” Lula said in the Amazonian city of Belem during an interview with international news agencies, including News.

He police raid last week In the fight against the Red Command drug gang, thousands of officers fought against heavily armed men dressed in camouflage, who threw explosives at police from drones.

“Bomb-dropping drones are now a trend used by heavily armed criminal groups,” Carlos Solar of the Royal United Services Institute told the BBC.

Rafael Soares, a journalist who covers crime in Rio, told BBC News Brazil last week that the Red Command had been on the offensive in Rio in recent years, reclaiming territory it had lost to its rivals, the First Capital Command.

Police footage published by local media shows gang members preparing for the fight, with dozens of people arriving in a wooded area where they clashed with elite security forces and where many of the bodies were found the next day. BBC News verified several videos showing dozens of bodies arranged in a row in a market area of ​​Rio, in the northern district of Penha.

The battle exposed Rio de Janeiro’s chronic security problems and divisions over how to address them.

While human rights activists have reported harrowing scenes of dead bodies lining the street, polls showed that many of the city’s citizens, tired of crime, supported the operation.

Felipe Curi, head of Rio’s Civil Police, told reporters Friday that police had so far identified the bodies of 99 “criminals” among the dead, 42 of them subject to arrest warrants and 78 with extensive criminal records.

Amid criticism that his administration is too lenient on crime, Lula said Friday that he had submitted a bill to parliament proposing a minimum sentence of 30 years in prison for gang members.

A photographer who witnessed the aftermath of the operation told the BBC how residents returned with the mutilated bodies of those who had died.

The bodies “kept coming: 25, 30, 35, 40, 45,” Bruno Itan told BBC Brazil. He said the bodies included those of police officers.

One of the bodies had been decapitated; others were “totally disfigured,” Itan said. Many also had what he said were stab wounds.