At least 119 people killed in Rio de Janeiro police raid on Comando Vermelho gang, drawing condemnation from president and UN
RIO DE JANEIRO: Residents of a Rio de Janeiro community lined up their dead in the street after Brazil’s bloodiest police raid killed at least 119 people.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was left horrified by the death toll from the operation just days before Brazil hosts COP30 global climate talks.
While activists and the United Nations raised concerns over the use of force by police, Rio’s state government hailed the operation as a success against the powerful Comando Vermelho gang.
The heavily-armed group dropped bombs on officers from drones and has taken over large swathes of Rio de Janeiro in recent years.
A day after the police operation paralysed the city, residents of the Complexo da Penha favela recovered dozens of bodies from a forest on its outskirts.
One man was decapitated and another completely disfigured, with residents denouncing what they termed executions.
The state came to massacre, it wasn’t a police operation according to one woman who did not wish to give her name.
State authorities said the provisional death toll now stood at 119, including 115 suspected criminals and four police officers.
The Public Defender’s Office in Rio reported at least 132 deaths.
Large numbers of officers who took part in the operation were backed by armored vehicles, helicopters and drones.
The police and suspected gang members traded heavy gunfire as terrified residents scrambled for cover.
Comando Vermelho seized dozens of buses and used them to barricade main highways during the operation.
State governor Claudio Castro described the raid against what he has termed narcoterrorism as a success.
Secretary of the military police Marcelo de Menezes said elite special forces had deliberately pushed criminals into the forest to protect the population.
Civil police secretary Felipe Curi alleged the bodies displayed in the street were in their underwear because they had been stripped by residents.
Angry residents accused the police of summary killings.
There are people who have been executed, many of them shot in the back of the head according to Raull Santiago, a 36-year-old resident and activist.
Lawyer Albino Pereira Neto told AFP some of the bodies bore burn marks and that a number of those killed had been tied up.
The president is horrified by the number of fatal incidents and was surprised that an operation of this scale was set up without the knowledge of the federal government said Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski.
UN chief Antonio Guterres was greatly concerned by the number of casualties according to his spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said it was horrified and called for swift investigations. – AFP
