RIO DE JANEIRO, July 23 (NNN-AGENCIES) — At least 19 people were killed during a police raid targeting a crime group at the Almao favelas in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, police reported.
Among the dead were a 50-year-old woman, who was hit by a stray bullet during the Thursday raid, and a police officer, police spokesman Ivan Blaz said at a press conference.
Four suspects accused of killing police officers were arrested during the operation, in which 400 officers were involved and supported by four helicopters and 10 bullet-proof armored vehicles.
Blaz described the situation in the region as “very tense,” saying that the criminal ring had expanded from drug trafficking to robbing cargo trucks entering the city of Rio de Janeiro.
The dragnet aimed to locate and arrest the gang members, who planned to enter other favelas to carry out vehicle thefts, Lieutenant Colonel Uira do Nascimento Ferreira of the Special Operations Battalion of the militarized police in Rio said at the press conference.
Locals were seen carrying injured people into vehicles as police watched.
Gilberto Santiago Lopes, from the Anacrim Human Rights Commission, said police refused to help.
The police “don’t aim to arrest them, they aim to kill them, so if they’re injured, they think they don’t deserve help”, he said.
Deadly raids are not uncommon in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, as police seek to hunt down drug trafficking gangs.
But human rights groups in Brazil are highly critical of police operations in overcrowded, low-income communities, saying they put the lives of residents at risk without really curbing the power of the gangs.
In May, 22 people were killed, also including a female bystander, in the Vila Cruzeiro favela.
Last year, at least 25 people, including a police officer, were killed in a shootout in the Jacarezinho area of the city. — NNN-AGENCIES
