Brazil: At least 25 killed in drug gun battle in Rio
2 min read At least 25 folks have been killed in a shootout between suspected drug traffickers and police in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday, one of many state’s deadliest police raids, police mentioned. People focused within the raid within the poor Jacarezinho neighbourhood tried to flee throughout rooftops as police arrived in armored autos and helicopters flew overhead, tv photographs confirmed. The firefight compelled residents to shelter of their houses.
The victims included one police officer, and the rest have been suspected members of the drug-trafficking gang that dominated life within the slum, together with a few of its leaders, police mentioned. It was the deadliest single police operation in 16 years for Rio state which has suffered for many years from drug-related violence in its quite a few favelas.
The massacre prompted criticism from human rights teams together with Amnesty International, who lambasted the police for the “reprehensible and unjustifiable” lack of life in a neighborhood principally populated by Black and poor folks.
“The number of people killed in this police operation is reprehensible, as is the fact that, once again, this massacre took place in a favela,” mentioned Jurema Werneck, government director of Amnesty International Brazil, referring to the informally organized neighborhood with few public providers. A 2005 raid within the Baixada Fluminense in Rio’s violent northern outskirts killed 29 folks.
“This is one of the largest death tolls in a police operation in Rio, surpassing 19 at Complexo do Alemão slum in 2007, except we did not lose one of ours then,” police chief Ronaldo Oliveira advised Reuters. Human Rights Watch (HRW) mentioned that Rio de Janeiro prosecutors have a constitutional obligation to supervise the police and pursue legal investigations of police abuses. It referred to as for an intensive and unbiased investigation into the deaths.
According to HRW, Rio police killed 453 folks and a minimum of 4 cops died in police actions through the first three months of the yr, regardless of a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting operations in communities through the COVID-19 pandemic besides in “absolutely exceptional cases.”
Police mentioned along with drug trafficking, the gang robbed vehicles of cargo and held up commuter trains to steal from passengers. Police displayed an arsenal of seized weapons at a information convention: six assault rifles, 15 handguns, a machine gun, 14 grenades and a spherical of artillery ammunition.
