The Guardian reports: A Brazilian television cameraman has been killed while filming an intense shoot-out between police and drug traffickers that claimed at least four other lives in Rio de Janeiro.
Gelson Domingos da Silva, an experienced crime photographer working for the Bandeirantes TV network, was reportedly hit in the chest by a high-calibre rifle shot while covering a dawn special forces raid on the Antares favela in western Rio.
According to Reporters Without Borders, five journalists have been killed in Brazil so far this year.
One photograph published in the Brazilian media showed Domingos, 46, moments before he was shot, crouching behind two rifle-toting military policemen and a roadblock improvised from a tree trunk. A second photograph showed the cameraman’s lifeless body in a police car.
Authorities in Rio have earned widespread praise for their pioneering “pacification” scheme, which has seen more than a dozen slums cleared of heavily armed drug gangs.
But Sunday’s shoot-out, in which four alleged drug traffickers also lost their lives, was a reminder that outside the tourist areas and the region around Rio’s Maracanã World Cup final stadium, the situation remains critical. Gangs armed with war-grade arsenals continue to control tracts of the city and clashes with police remain commonplace.