Residents of a Rio de Janeiro favela spent all night collecting bodies in trucks and laying them down in a central square, after a huge police raid on a notorious drug gang.
After what is being criticized as Brazil’s latest example of the excessive use of force, at least 50 bodies of mostly topless young men lay on the ground in Penha on early Wednesday morning. Penha was one of two sites targeted in Rio’s deadliest ever police operation.
According to an AP journalist at the scene, hundreds of residents and family members of victims surrounded the bodies, some crying while others screamed “massacre” and later chanted “justice.”
The massive raid, involving 2,500 police and soldiers in helicopters, armored vehicles and on foot, has left at 132 people dead, including 60 suspected gang members and four policemen, according to officials.
The tally from the Rio public defender’s office was more than double the death toll released on Tuesday, when state authorities reported at least 64 dead, including four police officers. The raids were targeting a major drug gang, the state government said.
Rio Governor Claudio Castro said the initial tally had only counted bodies processed in the public morgue.
Many bodies were found in a wooded ridge near the urban community. Local activist Raull Santiago said he was part of a team that found about 15 bodies before dawn.
“We saw executed people: shot in the back, shots to the head, stab wounds, people tied up. This level of brutality, the hatred spread – there’s no other way to describe it except as a massacre,” Santiago said.
Castro said on Tuesday that Rio was at war against “narco-terrorism,” a term that echoed the Trump administration in its campaign against drug smuggling in Latin America. Rio’s state government said that those who had been killed had resisted police action.
Rio has been the scene of lethal police raids for decades. In March 2005, some 29 people were killed in Rio’s Baixada Fluminense region, while in May 2021, 28 were killed in the Jacarezinho favela.
But the scale and lethality of Tuesday’s operation are unprecedented. Non-governmental organizations and the U.N. human rights body quickly raised concerns over the high number of reported fatalities and called for investigations.
The operation’s stated objectives were capturing leaders and limiting the territorial expansion of the Red Command criminal gang, which has increased its control over favelas in recent years.
Some 81 suspects were arrested, while 93 rifles and more than half a ton of drugs were seized, the state government said.
The police raid drew gunfire and other retaliation from gang members, causing scenes of chaos across the city. Schools in the affected areas shuttered, a local university canceled classes, and roads were blocked with buses used as barricades.
Gang members allegedly targeted police with at least one drone. Rio de Janeiro’s state government shared a video on X of what appeared to show a drone firing a projectile from the sky.
Gov. Castro, from the conservative opposition Liberal Party, said Tuesday that Rio was “alone in this war.” He said the federal government should be providing more support to combat crime — in a swipe at the administration of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
His comments were challenged by the Justice Ministry, which said it had responded to requests from Rio’s state government to deploy national forces in the state, renewing their presence 11 times.
Gleisi Hoffmann, the Lula administration’s liaison with the parliament, agreed that more coordinated action was needed but pointed to a recent crackdown on money laundering as an example of the federal government’s action on organized crime.
Lula’s chief of staff, Rui Costa, requested an emergency meeting Wednesday in Rio with local authorities and Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski.
Criminal gangs have expanded their presence across Brazil in recent years, including in the Amazon rainforest.
Filipe dos Anjos, secretary general of favela rights’ organization FAFERJ, said that these kind of police operations don’t solve the problem as those who were killed are easily replaceable.
“In about thirty days, organized crime will already be reorganized in the territory, doing what it always does: selling drugs, stealing cargo, collecting payments and fees,” he said.
“In terms of concrete results for the population, for society, this kind of operation achieves practically nothing,” he added.
Additional reporting by Reuters.
