BRAZIL: Drug traffickers launched a wave of co-ordinated attacks on police in Sao Paulo at the weekend, leaving at least 37 people dead in one of the most violent chapters in recent Brazilian history.
Groups of criminals brandishing hand grenades and automatic weapons swept across the metropolis, gunning down members of the security forces as they worked. At least two bystanders were killed in the crossfire.
Simultaneous rebellions broke out in 22 of the state's prisons, where about 100 people were still being held hostage yesterday. Last night, the police death toll stood at 35, with 32 seriously injured.
Sao Paulo's governor, Claudio Lembo, blamed the attacks on a drug faction known as the First Command of the Capital (PCC).
Founded in 1993 by prisoners at the Taubate penitentiary in Sao Paulo, it is one of the most powerful drug factions in the country. Mr Lembo said the attacks were a response to the transfer of 765 prisoners to a maximum security unit in the interior of the state.
The group reportedly included eight PCC members who were placed in solitary confinement to isolate them from gang members outside the prison.
"There will be no negotiation with crime," Mr Lembo said after visiting a church where he prayed for those killed.
Brazil's notoriously fragile and overcrowded prison system is renowned as a hotbed of gang activity. Drug factions control the prisons in many of its large cities, giving orders by radio and mobile phones from inside their cells.
The problem is most serious in Sao Paulo, which is home to around 130,000 of the country's 360,000 prisoners.
Marcelo Freixo, a human rights activist who has spent nearly 20 years working with the prison system, said the wave of violence was the result of decades of under-investment.
"Nothing on this scale has happened before," he said. "What scares me is that this wasn't detected before. The government simply doesn't know what to do." He said he feared the attacks would trigger more violence as the security forces sought revenge.
"How can the police go about negotiating the end of these rebellions knowing that their colleagues were killed like this?"
Yesterday internet chat sites captured the fury circulating within Sao Paulo's police force.
"Now is the time to act," read one message on a police special forces chat room. "Kill them all and hang all their bodies up in public for everyone to see. I want to know if human rights [ representatives] have gone to visit relatives of the police."
Another contributor demanded a cleansing of Sao Paulo's prisons, similar to the 1992 Carandiru prison massacre in which 111 prisoners were killed after a rebellion. "There are still fools who think it is absurd for the police to kill these bandits," the contributor wrote. "Today we are in mourning, [ but] tomorrow the talk will be different."