Newspaper reading activity

Rio de Janeiro gun battle sees toddler and photographer among casualties

Violence that has left at least 49 dead within a week is focused on headquarters of city's oldest drug faction

A two-year-old girl and a Reuters photographer were wounded and at least seven people killed yesterday during the third day of gunbattles in Rio de Janeiro.

The unprecedented violence, which has so far left at least 49 people dead, is focused on the Complexo do Alemão, a labyrinth of red-brick houses that is the headquarters of Rio's oldest drug faction, the Red Command.

Last night local drug traffickers fired at police helicopters as hundreds of police and army operatives surrounded the giant favela, home to some 70,000 impoverished Brazilians.

Giovana Isabela da Penha, aged two, was rushed to hospital after being shot inside her home in the Nova Brasilia shantytown, part of the Complexo do Alemão.

Paulo Whitaker, an experienced Brazilian-born photographer, was shot in the left shoulder while covering explosive gunfights between police and heavily armed drug traffickers. According to one report Whitaker told doctors he had removed a bullet from his shoulder.

A police source told the Guardian that traffickers had targeted journalists and citizens on the outskirts of the slum, although a statement from Reuters said Whitaker had been caught in crossfire.

In a live interview with Brazilian TV last night, Rio's security secretary José Mariano Beltrame vowed to press on with operations. "We cannot back down. We must carry on. We have to occupy territory, take control of territory and advance," said a visibly exhausted Beltrame.

Among those killed yesterday was a suspected drug trafficker named by police as 24-year-old Thiago Ferreira Faria. Faria, who was shot through the chest, was better-known by his nickname G3, a reference to the assault rifle of the same name.

Throughout the day a stream of gun-shot wound victims, including a 61-year-old woman, were taken to Getúlio Vargas hospital, which reputedly treats the highest number of gunshot wounds in Latin America each year.

Beltrame said slum pacification projects, which have so far taken control of 13 favelas, would help free Rio's poor from armed gangs by 2014, when Brazil hosts the World Cup. "I am sure that through our actions over the last two years we have helped many people gain the most important thing for human dignity: hope. By 2014 this will be brought to all of Rio's citizens," he vowed.

In a statement, Amnesty International urged "authorities to act proportionately and within the law in their response to the wave of criminal gang violence that has swept Rio de Janeiro".

"This violence is totally unacceptable but the police response has put communities at risk. The authorities must ensure that the security and wellbeing of the broader population comes first and foremost in any operation carried out in residential areas," said Patrick Wilcken, the group's Brazil researcher.