The number of victims of Tuesday’s anti-drug raid by Brazilian police in two favelas in the city of Rio de Janeiro rose to at least 132 on Wednesday. local authorities said. The government in the capital of Brazil was allegedly unaware of the large-scale operation. TASR informs about it according to the reports of AFP, DPA and AP agencies.
“The latest information is about 132 dead,” the Rio de Janeiro state ombudsman’s office, which provides legal aid to the poor, told AFP. This figure was not immediately confirmed by other sources. The AP reported that a total of 119 people were killed in the operation, according to police. So far, the authorities are talking about four dead policemen.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed dismay at the high number of victims of the police crackdown on drug gangs. “The President is appalled at the death toll and is shocked that an operation of this magnitude was organized without the knowledge of the federal government,” he said Minister of Justice Ricardo Lewandowski.
Commission on Human Rights of the State Legislature Rio will demand an explanation as to why the favela has become a “battlefield and site of such barbarism”. commission chairman Dani Monteiro told AFP on Tuesday. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an urgent investigation into this incident. About 2,500 police officers participated in the police raid, which targeted drug gangs in the two favelas of Penha and Alemão. The police also used two helicopters, 32 armored vehicles and 12 demolition machines to destroy the barricades in the narrow streets.
The governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Claudio Castro, called the operation the largest in the country’s history on Tuesday. The goal of Operation Contenção (Suppression) was to arrest members of the Comando Vermelho criminal organization, local authorities said. Castro put the death toll at around 60 on the day of the violent operation, but warned the actual number was likely higher.
The number of victims increased significantly after people from the surrounding favelas began to pull the bodies of the victims from the rubble. In Rio, Brazil’s main tourist center, heavy-handed police operations are frequent, especially in poor and densely populated favelas, which are often controlled by criminal gangs. In 2024, around 700 people died in police raids in Rio.
