Police in Rio de Janeiro raided the Vila Cruzeiro favela before dawn on Tuesday, setting off a fierce firefight that authorities said killed more than 20 people.
The operation was aimed at locating and arresting criminal leaders, some from other states, police said in a statement.
The statement said that officers were fired on while preparing their incursion, and that one resident had been shot and killed on site.
Photo: AFP
Local media reported that the person was a 41-year-old woman who was hit by a stray bullet.
The police statement said 11 people also were found wounded after the shoot-out and taken to a nearby state hospital, but as the day wore on, residents used their own vehicles to carry more people with gunshot wounds to the same hospital — most of whom were already dead.
The operation was conducted jointly by the military police and federal highway police. Officers seized 16 vehicles and 13 automatic rifles, as well as pistols and grenades, the police statement said.
By late on Tuesday, 21 corpses had arrived at the hospital and seven people were receiving treatment for injuries, the state’s health secretariat said in an e-mailed statement.
That makes the incident one of Rio de Janeiro’s deadliest police operations.
It comes one year after a raid of the Jacarezinho favela that left 28 people dead, prompting claims of abuse and summary executions.
Earlier this year, the Brazilian Supreme Court established a series of conditions for police to conduct raids in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas.
The court ruled that lethal force should only be used in situations in which all other means have been exhausted and when necessary to protect life, and gave police 180 days to install devices to record audio and video on their uniforms and vehicles.
Authorities on Tuesday had sought to intercept gang members outside the neighborhood, which was not possible after police began taking fire, Uira do Nascimento Ferreira, leader of the military police’s tactical unit, told reporters at a news conference.
Outside the hospital, residents of Vila Cruzeiro mourned the loss of family and friends, while some protested.
State public prosecutors said in a statement that they had opened a criminal investigation.
They gave the military police 10 days to provide details about the operation, indicating which officials were responsible for each death and the justification for use of lethal force, the statement said.
Pins hidden in her shoes, head forced down a toilet, kicked in the stomach: South Korean hairdresser Pyo Ye-rim suffered a litany of abuse from school bullies, but now she is speaking out. The 26-year-old is part of a phenomenon sweeping South Korea known as “Hakpok #MeToo,” where people who were bullied publicly name and shame the perpetrators of school violence — “hakpok” in Korean — decades after the alleged crimes. Made famous globally by Netflix’s gory revenge series The Glory, the movement has ensnared everyone from K-pop stars to baseball players and accusations — often anonymous — can be career-ending, with
One of Australia’s two active volcanoes on an island near Antarctica — known as Big Ben — has been spotted by satellite spewing lava. The lava flow on the uninhabited Heard Island, about 4,100km southwest of Perth and 1,500km north of Antarctica, is part of an ongoing eruption that was first noted more than a decade ago. The image was caught by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite on Thursday, and is a composite of an optical picture and an infrared image. The lava is seen flowing down the side of Big Ben from near the summit, known as Mawson Peak.
TIME TO TALK: Among China’s grievances were economic and trade issues related to Taiwan, but both countries emphasized the need to maintain communication US Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪) on Friday raised complaints about China’s state-led economic policies during a meeting with Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao (王文濤), who objected to US tariffs and trade policies, as well as issues related to Taiwan, their offices said. However, statements from the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce emphasized the need for Washington and Beijing to maintain communication on trade. “Ambassador Tai highlighted the need to address the critical imbalances caused by China’s state-led, non-market approach to the economy and trade policy,” the USTR said in a statement released after the
SYMBOLIC: The bill sponsored by a cross-party group of lawmakers was hailed as a ‘historic moment’ in the fight for marriage equality, but is unlikely to pass Lawmakers in South Korea have proposed the country’s first same-sex marriage bill, in a move hailed by civic groups as a defining moment in the fight for equality. The marriage equality bill, proposed by South Korean lawmaker Jang Hye-yeong of the minor opposition Justice Party and co-sponsored by 12 lawmakers across all the main parties, seeks to amend the country’s civil code to allow same-sex marriage. The bill is unlikely to pass, but forms part of a trio of bills expected to increase pressure on the government to expand the idea of family beyond traditional criteria. The two other bills relate to