A police raid and ensuing clashes with a drug gang in Rio de Janeiro left at least 119 people dead, including 115 suspects and four policemen, officials said Thursday, a day after the massive operation drew criticism for using excessive force.
The death toll was an increase over what authorities originally said was 60 suspected gang members and four policemen killed in Tuesday’s one-day raid by about 2500 police and soldiers in two low-income neighbourhoods of the city.
Police spokesman Felipe Curi told a news conference that additional bodies were found in a wooded area around one of the neighbourhoods where he said they had worn camouflage clothing while battling with security forces. He said local residents had removed clothing and equipment from the bodies in what he said would be investigated as tampering with evidence.
"These individuals were in the woods, equipped with camouflage clothing, vests and weapons. Now many of them appeared wearing underwear or shorts, with no equipment, as if they had come through a portal and changed clothes," Curi said.
Earlier Wednesday, in the neighbourhood of Penha, residents had surrounded many of the bodies, collected in trucks and displayed in a main square, and shouted "massacre" and "justice" before forensic authorities arrived to retrieve the remains.
The tally of suspects arrested in Wednesday's raid stood at 113 — up from 81 cited previously, Curi said. Earlier, the state government said 93 rifles and more than half a tonne of drugs were seized.
The police raid had drawn gunfire and other retaliation from gang members, causing scenes of chaos across the city on Tuesday. Schools in the affected areas shuttered, a local university cancelled classes, and roads were blocked with buses used as barricades.
On Wednesday morning, local activist Raull Santiago said he was part of a team in Penha that found about 15 bodies before dawn.
"We saw executed people: shot in the back, shots to the head, stab wounds, people tied up. This level of brutality, the hatred spread – there’s no other way to describe it except as a massacre," Santiago said.
Rio state Gov. Claudio Castro said on Tuesday that Rio was at war against "narco-terrorism", a term that echoed the Trump administration in its campaign against drug smuggling in Latin America.
Rio’s state government said that those who had been killed had resisted police.
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.
But the scale and lethality of Tuesday’s operation are unprecedented. Non-governmental organisations and the UN human rights body quickly raised concerns over the high number of reported fatalities and called for investigations.
The operation's stated objectives were capturing leaders and limiting the territorial expansion of the Red Command criminal gang, which has increased its control over favelas in recent years.
Gang members allegedly targeted police with at least one drone. Rio de Janeiro’s state government shared a video on X of what appeared to show a drone firing a projectile from the sky.
Gov. Castro, from the conservative opposition Liberal Party, said Tuesday that Rio was "alone in this war". He said the federal government should be providing more support to combat crime — in a swipe at the administration of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
His comments were challenged by the Justice Ministry, which said it had responded to requests from Rio’s state government to deploy national forces in the state, renewing their presence 11 times.
Gleisi Hoffmann, the Lula administration’s liaison with the parliament, agreed that more coordinated action was needed but pointed to a recent crackdown on money laundering as an example of the federal government’s action on organised crime.
Lula's chief of staff, Rui Costa, requested an emergency meeting Wednesday in Rio with local authorities and Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski.
Criminal gangs have expanded their presence across Brazil in recent years, including in the Amazon rainforest.
Filipe dos Anjos, secretary general of favela rights’ organisation FAFERJ, said that these kind of police operations don’t solve the problem as those who were killed are easily replaceable.
"In about thirty days, organised crime will already be reorganised in the territory, doing what it always does: selling drugs, stealing cargo, collecting payments and fees," he said.
"In terms of concrete results for the population, for society, this kind of operation achieves practically nothing," he added.
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