A police operation in a favela near Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, left 13 dead this Thursday in clashes with alleged criminals, including the leader of a drug gang that operates in the north of the country, authorities reported.
A police operation in a favela near Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, left 13 dead on Thursday in clashes with alleged criminals, including the leader of a drug gang that operates in the north of the country, authorities reported.
“There are 13 dead, two individuals in prison and a large number of weapons seized,” Fabrício Oliveira, from the Coordination of Special Resources of the Rio de Janeiro Civil Police, reported at a press conference.
The operation took place in the Salgueiro Complex, located in Sao Goncalo, a city on the poor outskirts of Rio, with almost a million inhabitants.
“It was a very violent operation on their part,” Oliveira said, referring to whom he described as members of a “gang that uses military and guerrilla tactics.”
“All of our armored vehicles and aircraft received several rifle shots,” he explained at the press conference, where more than a dozen seized weapons and drugs were presented. In the midst of the intense shooting, two women who live in the place were injured but are “out of danger,” added the police spokesman.
The joint action of agents of the civil and military police of Rio had as its objective “the capture of members of the Comando Vermelho of the state of Pará who were taking refuge in the town,” according to a statement from the force issued hours before.
The Comando Vermelho, which emerged in Rio de Janeiro, is one of the largest criminal organizations in Brazil, dedicated to drug trafficking.
Television images showed armored trucks of the military police moving between the houses of the community. By late afternoon, the security forces were still deployed at the entrance to the favela, AFP confirmed.
Among the dead is “the main leader of the largest criminal organization that operated in Pará,” reported the governor of this northern state, Helder Barbalho, on Twitter.
“Leonardo Araújo, known as ‘L41’, a fugitive from justice, died in a confrontation with security agents,” he said.
According to the police, the organization he led “is primarily responsible for the death of 40 police officers since 2021” in the state of Pará.
The action also targeted other criminal gang leaders “involved in recent attacks on communities in the west area of Rio,” where several vehicles were set on fire on Wednesday.
Deadly operation in Rio
Amnesty International Brazil criticized the Rio government for carrying out an “institutionalization of the policy of extermination” in a “disastrously lethal” operation in Sao Goncalo.
“How long will the peripheral, favela and black population of Rio have to put up with the war policy that guides the Rio police?” the NGO deplored in a tweet.
In 2021, 1,356 people died at the hands of the police forces in the state of Rio de Janeiro -the ones that kill the most and die the most in confrontations in Brazil-, according to the Monitor da Violencia project.
For his part, the governor of Rio, Claudio Castro, He said on Twitter that “two criminals who commanded criminal gangs from Sergipe (northeast state) and Pará were captured.”
Castro made reference to this and another operation previously carried out in the Maré Complex, in the north of the city of Rio.
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