Some Trench Town residents have insisted that there were more women and children killed in the military assault on Tivoli Gardens than the authorities are letting on.
The incursion was aimed at rooting out gangsters who blockaded the west Kingston community since last week.
The stench of decaying bodies hung over a section of May Pen Cemetery in Kingston when a Gleaner news team visited close to the burial ground at 1 p.m. yesterday.
Residents said they saw more than a dozen bodies being prepared for burial in an early-morning exploration of the cemetery.
One female resident said that she saw 15 wooden boxes – some with two bodies. She also said she saw nine other bodies lying on the ground.
One of the residents showed The Gleaner a video allegedly shot yesterday morning which showed several badly decomposed bodies. While it was hard to identify the gender of the bodies on the video, it appeared that one was a woman and another that of a young man who the resident said was 17 years old.
Official accounts indicated that 15 putrid bodies were being processed by a government pathologist for burial at the May Pen Cemetery.
The officials have said that most of the 73 bodies tallied have been men.
At a press briefing yesterday, Deputy Commissioner of Police Glenmore Hinds, who is in charge of the Tivoli operation, said two women were among the casualties when the body count had reached 50, but he could not give an update on whether more women had been killed.
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