A wave of attacks on police by gangs has killed at least 40 people -- including 25 security officials -- in the bloodiest assault of its kind in the history of Brazil's largest state, authorities said yesterday.
Related uprisings at 18 prisons across Sao Paulo state continued late on Saturday and early yesterday, after scores of armed assaults on police stations, patrol cars and bars frequented by off-duty officers.
The attacks, which started late on Friday night were the work of the First Capital Command, known by the Portuguese initials PCC, said Enio Lucciola, press spokesman for the Sao Paulo State Public Safety Department.
"It is trying to undermine our authority and intimidate us and the population at large at a time when we have redoubled our efforts to destroy the organization," Lucciola said by telephone.
The attacks apparently came in response to several imprisoned PCC leaders being transferred and placed in solitary confinement, a practice authorities use to sever prisoners' ties to gang members outside prison.
Eight FCC leaders were among 765 inmates being transferred since Wednesday to a remote high security prison in the interior of the state, Folha de Sao Paulo's Web site reported.
The transfer sought to isolate those leaders from FCC gangs outside prison, authorities said.
Public Safety Secretary Saulo de Castro Abreu told a news conference that the PCC carried out 55 separate attacks on Friday and Saturday that killed at least 23 police officers, the girlfriend of one of them, a passer-by and five suspected gang members.
Globo News TV network reported a total of 64 attacks through Saturday night. Shortly before midnight a police agent was shot in the head and taken to a hospital under serious condition, the report said.
The attacks and ensuing gun battles left wounded another 32 people -- 15 policemen, 15 attackers and two bystanders -- he said. At least 16 suspects were arrested.
Authorities said all police units were on alert and the federal government said it was ready to help the state with all means available.
Founded in 1993 by prisoners at the Taubate Penitentiary in Sao Paulo, the PCC is involved in drug and arms trafficking, kidnappings, bank robberies and prison breaks and rebellions, police say.
Police on Saturday set up checkpoints in the low-income Sapopemba district of Sao Paulo, stopping and searching vehicles for weapons. TV stations broadcast images of bullet-riddled police cars and shattered glass at a police station that was attacked.
Abreu said police were targeted in Sao Paulo and in the suburbs of Osasco, Guarulhos and Carapicuiba.
Police stations in the coastal cities of Cubatao and Guaruja -- about 80km southeast of Sao Paulo -- also were attacked.
Nagashi Furukawa, prison affairs secretary for Sao Paulo state, said that the PCC also apparently orchestrated rebellions in 24 of the state's 144 prisons.
Hours later, Furukawa's press office said in a statement that six uprisings had ended and that inmates in the other 18 prisons were holding about 96 hostages.
Globo daily's Web site counted 101 hostages.
"As far as we can tell none of the hostages has been hurt or seriously threatened, which is why we are considering these uprisings as minor," said Marcelo Daniel, a spokesman for the Prison Affairs Department.
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