Brazilian Police Crackdown on Gangs in Rio kills 132 People

The death toll from a massive police operation in Rio de Janeiro has risen to 132, officials confirmed on Wednesday.

It marks the deadliest police raid in the city’s history and drawing international condemnation.

The raid, which took place on Tuesday in the favelas of Alemão and Penha in northern Rio, involved around 2,500 police officers as well as armored vehicles and helicopters.

Authorities said the operation targeted a suspected drug-trafficking network entrenched in the city’s low-income neighborhoods.

The public defender’s office released the updated death toll after grieving residents carried dozens of bodies into a public square in Penha, lining them up in protest at what they described as a massacre.

Rio state Governor Cláudio Castro said forensic work was ongoing and that the official number of dead could still change.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was reportedly “astonished” by the scale of the operation and expressed concern that the federal government had not been informed in advance.

The United Nations Human Rights Office said it was “horrified” by the raid, calling for transparency and accountability in the investigation.

Local media reported that many of the bodies were retrieved from a nearby hillside where intense gun battles had taken place.

Witnesses said both suspected gang members and civilians were among the dead, alongside several police officers.

The incident has once again highlighted the longstanding tension between Brazilian security forces and communities in Rio’s favelas, where authorities have waged a decades-long battle against heavily armed drug gangs.

Human rights groups and community leaders have condemned the raid, calling it evidence of excessive use of force in one of Brazil’s most unequal cities. (Agencies)