Huge raid on Rio gang leaves at least 10 people dead, 80 under arrest

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About 2,500 Brazilian police and soldiers launched a massive raid on a drug-trafficking gang in Rio de Janeiro and arrested 80 suspects Tuesday while sparking shootouts that left at least 10 people dead. Calling it the biggest such raid in history, authorities said it included officers in helicopters and armoured vehicles and targeted the notorious Red Command in the sprawling low-income favelas of Complexo de Alemao and Penha.

Police did not confirm any deaths, but local media reports, including by online news website G1, said scores of people were believed killed. An Associated Press journalist saw at least 10 bodies arrive at the Getulio Vargas hospital in Penha, two of them police officers. An unknown number of people were wounded.

Footage on social media showed fire and smoke rising from the two favelas as gunfire rang out. The city's Education Department said 46 schools across the two neighbourhoods were closed, and the nearby Federal University of Rio de Janeiro cancelled night classes and told people on campus to seek shelter.

Authorities arrested at least 80 suspects, Rio's civil police said in a statement. The coordination action Tuesday followed a year of investigation into the criminal group, police said. Claudio Castro, the conservative governor of Rio state, said the operation was the largest in the city's history, and that the federal government should be providing more support to combat crime.

Emerging from Rio's prisons, the Red Command criminal gang has expanded its control in favelas in recent years. Rio has been the scene of lethal police raids for decades. In March 2005, some 29 people were killed in Rio's Baixada Fluminense region, while in May 2021, 28 were killed in the Jacarezinho favela.

While the Tuesday's police operation was similar to previous ones, its scale was unprecedented, said Luis Flavio Sapori, a sociologist and public safety expert at Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais. He suggested the eventual confirmed death toll could dwarf that of previous raids.

He argued that these kinds of operations are inefficient because they do not tend to catch the masterminds, but rather target underlings who can later be replaced. 'It's not enough to go in, exchange gunfire, and leave. There's a lack of strategy in Rio de Janeiro's public security policy," Sapori said. 'Some lower-ranking members of these factions are killed, but those individuals are quickly replaced by others.'

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