An operation for capture of drug traffickers from a powerful criminal group left this tuesday at least 22 dead in a favela complex in Rio de Janeiroa year after the city’s deadliest police action killed 28 people.
In context: Military operations in Rio de Janeiro leave at least 14 dead
La Penha, in the north of Rio, woke up to the sound of shots, after Military Police agents entered the gigantic complex of favelas in Rio in search of leaders of the criminal group Comando Vermelho, one of the most important in Brazil together with the First Capital Command (PCC).
According to the policethe agents were ambushed by the criminals during a raid that left at least 13 fatalities, including 11 suspected civilians, a neighbor of this region of poor neighborhoods and another person of whom we have no details.
Subsequently, official sources raised the number of deceased to 22, although some of them have not yet been identified.
The victims were taken to an area hospital., until where relatives moved to recognize the bodies already lifeless, according to the Efe press agency.
The objective of the operation, according to the authorities, it is try to dismantle the Vermelho Commanda faction “with an ideology of war” and which is “responsible for more than 80% of the armed confrontations” of the state of Rio de Janeiro.
“It has an expansionist policy, an ideology of war, of confrontation. Not only against the police forces, but also against other criminal groups,” stated the spokesman for the Military Police, Ivan Blaz.
According to Blaz, the Comando Vermelho has begun to protect drug traffickers from other states who “give orders” from Rio de Janeiro “to commit homicides in other regions” of the country and that they were allegedly hiding in Vila Cruzeiro, within the Penha Complex.
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During the operation, which involved armored vehicles, was apprehended an “arsenal of war” composed of pistols, 10 grenades and at least 13 rifles from China and Eastern Europe who arrived in Brazil through international arms trafficking, as well as vehicles and motorcycles.
“Are weapons that can kill people at long range,” Blaz stressed.
In a first reaction after the shooting, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for an “immediate and thorough” investigation of the events and denounced that the inhabitants of the neighborhood “They spent hours terrified.”
“Rio urgently needs a new public security policy that is not the bullet,” HRW added.
