At least 132 people were killed during a deadly police raid in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, the state public defender’s office said.
The number of dead was more than double that which state officials had cited after the police operation in the favelas (poor neighbourhoods) of Alemão and Penha, in the north of Rio.
The public defender’s office, which provides legal assistance to the poor, made the new death toll public after grieving residents had laid out the bodies of at least 70 people in a square early on Wednesday.
The police raid was the deadliest in the city, where authorities have for decades tried to contain the gangs which control many of its poorer neighbourhoods.
Even before the public defender’s office had put the death toll at 132, the high number of casualties – which previously stood at 64, including four police officers – had been denounced by the United Nation’s Human Rights office, which said it was “horrified” by the police operation.
Residents described the scenes unfolding on Tuesday as “war-like”, with shoot-outs between officers and armed men – with buses set on fire to create barricades.
According to the police, gang members also used drones to drop explosives on the officers as they fanned out through the neighbourhoods, which are strongholds of the Red Command.
“This is how the Rio police are treated by criminals: with bombs dropped by drones. This is the scale of the challenge we face. This is not ordinary crime, but narco-terrorism,” the governor of Rio state, Cláudio Castro, said.
Governor Castro said that the raid had been two months in the planning and was based on a thorough investigation.
Among those arrested is a man accused of being a leading drug dealer for the Red Command.
The governor also posted photos on social media of the four police officers who were killed in the operation.
He praised the officers killed on what he called “a historic day” in which he said they “confronted organised crime”.
Rafael Soares, a Brazilian journalist covering crime in Rio, told BBC News Brasil that the Red Command had been on the offensive in Rio in recent years, reclaiming territory it had lost to its rivals, First Capital Command (PCC).
Soares added that the police operation was part of Governor Castro’s efforts to leave his mark and deal a decisive blow to crime in the city ahead of elections next year.
The police raid also comes just days before the city is due to host the C40 World Mayors Summit – a meeting of nearly 100 mayors from the world’s leading cities – and the Earthshot Prize – the environmental award which will be handed out by Prince William on 5 November.
Huge police raids are not unusual in Rio, but the number of fatalities in Tuesday’s operation is.
According to Soares, police operations in which more than 20 people are killed are “very rare” across Brazil and those that do occur, have mainly happened in Rio.
Rio de Janeiro’s Minister for Public Security, Victor Santos, said that 280,000 people lived in the areas where the raids took place.
Police footage showed heavily-armed officers patrolling the narrow, steep lanes of the densely populated hillside favelas.
“This is a war we are seeing in Rio de Janeiro. Decades of inaction by all the institutions – municipal, state and federal – have allowed crime to expand in our territory,” Santos said.
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