The death toll from Rio de Janeiro’s worst-ever day of violence is now confirmed to stand at 123. More than 2,500 officers and special forces stormed an area of favelas near the city’s international airport on Tuesday that is considered the headquarters of one of Brazil’s most powerful organised crime groups.
On Wednesday, Rio de Janeiro residents lined a street with dozens of corpses found overnight – a week ahead of global climate events in the city.
The predawn police raid – the deadliest in Rio’s history – sparked intense gunfights in and around Alemão and Penha favelas, which are home to an estimated 300,000 people.
Drug traffickers from the Red Command criminal faction started shooting and set barricades and cars alight as civil and military police and special forces began their advance shortly after 4am. For the first time, the gang reportedly used weaponised drones to drop explosives on special forces teams.
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Gunshot wound victims were carried to a local hospital throughout the morning and by afternoon at least 64 people had been killed.
“The elevated lethality of the operation was expected but not desired,” Victor Santos, head of security for Rio state, told a news conference. Rio police officials confirmed 119 deaths so far, including four police officers. Horrific photos of some of the young male victims spread on social media.
Mr Santos said there was no connection to global events Rio will host next week related to the United Nations COP30 climate summit, including the C40 global summit of mayors tackling climate change and British Prince William’s Earthshot Prize.
Residents of the Penha neighbourhood in Rio gathered dozens of corpses from the surrounding forest overnight and lined up more than 70 of the bodies in the middle of a main street.
“I just want to take my son out of here and bury him,” said Taua Brito, a mother of one of those killed, surrounded by weeping mourners and onlookers on either side of the long row of bodies, some of which were covered with sheets or bags.
Rio’s right-wing governor, Cláudio Castro, declared the city “at war” and said it was the biggest police operation since a 2010 raid in the same region.
“This is no longer common crime, it’s narco-terrorism,” Mr Castro said in a video posted on social media showing armoured personnel carriers at the start of the mission.
Police said they had arrested 113 suspects in the operation and seized 118 firearms, at least 93 of which were automatic rifles. The weapons are a sign of the powerful arsenal Rio’s drug traffickers have acquired since they began flooding the favelas in the late 1980s.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was surprised to learn Rio police had launched an “extremely bloody, violent” operation without notifying or involving the federal government, Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski told journalists.
The minister said he planned to meet with Rio’s governor and could increase the number of federal security officials there.
Lula, who returned to Brasilia late on Tuesday from a trip to Malaysia, met with vice president Geraldo Alckmin and cabinet members on Wednesday to discuss the matter, his office said.
Victor Santos, Rio’s security secretary, told local television that “Operation Containment” had been ordered to capture Red Command gang members, who control of large chunks of Rio and are increasingly present in other parts of Brazil, including the Amazon region.
Rene Silva, a community activist and journalist from Alemoo who runs a local newspaper called Voz das Comunidades, said he had been woken by gunfire at about 5am.
He voiced despondency over the government’s insistence on conducting deadly and ultimately ineffective police raids into the favelas.
“This doesn’t solve the problem,” Mr Silva said. “Rio’s crime problem needs to be combated in other places – not just in the favelas. We don’t have plantations of marijuana or cocaine here. We don’t have gun factories here. This isn’t a fight against crime, it’s a fight against poverty.”
Glória Alves, a 65-year-old resident of an area of Alemão called Palmeiras, said she was woken shortly after 4am by her barking dog. Alves went into her bathroom, “and there was this volley of shots – so, so many shots. It was horrible”, she said.
The shooting continued around her home throughout the day.
Human rights activists and opposition politicians voiced outrage at the historic day of bloodshed. “What is happening in Alemao and in Penha isn’t an operation – it’s a state-sponsored massacre,” tweeted Lucia Marina dos Santos, a state congress member for the left-wing Worker’s party (PT). Santos accused authorities of turning Rio’s favelas into “war zones” as part of their failed “war on drugs”.
Over the past four decades Rio’s redbrick favelas have fallen further under the control of heavily armed criminal groups, primarily the Red Command, the Pure Third Command, and a constellation of paramilitaries gangs whose ranks often include off-duty members of the security forces. In recent months, the Red Command has embarked on a major offensive to seize control of territories in western Rio controlled by paramilitary groups called militias.
Mr Castro said police across Rio had been placed on high alert amid fears drug bosses could order attacks in reprisal for the operation, and on Tuesday afternoon criminals could be seen trying to close some of the city’s most important motorways and roads, including the one leading to the airport.
Schools, shops, bars and restaurants all over Rio closed down for fear of attacks and bus companies recalled their fleets, causing rush hour chaos for commuters. – Guardian
