At least ten dead in a police operation against gangs in a Rio de Janeiro favela

At least Ten people died this Wednesday and three others were injured in an operation in a favela in Rio de Janeiro with which the police sought to capture some of the leaders of the Comando Vermelho (Red Command), one of the largest criminal organizations in Brazil.

The number of victims was confirmed by the management of the Getúlio Vargas Hospitalwhere thirteen people were taken and shot, ten of whom arrived dead. Among the injured was a police officer, who was shot in the abdomen.

The operation, which It lasted for a few hours and generated an intense shootout.began at dawn this Wednesday in Vila Cruzeiro, one of the neighborhoods that make up the Penha Complex, a dangerous group of favelas in the northern part of Rio de Janeiro with areas controlled by drug trafficking groups.

According to the Public Security Secretariat of Rio de Janeiro, nine of the victims were members of the Red Command that They resisted the action of the authorities and from whom six rifles, grenades and ammunition were seized.

One of the dead was identified as Carlos Alberto Marques Toledo, who was identified as the leader of the gang of gunmen who controls drug trafficking in Chatubaa favela in the western area of ​​Rio de Janeiro distant from the Penha Complex.

According to the Civil Police, the operation was ordered precisely after intelligence information indicated that several leaders of the Red Command were meeting in Vila Cruzeiro to plan the invasion of neighborhoods controlled by rival gangs.

Agents from the Special Operations Battalion (BOPE), the elite group of the Militarized Police of Rio de Janeiro, and the Coordination of Special Resources (Core) of the Civil Police participated in the operation.

[Al menos 18 muertos en una redada policial en la favela del Alemão, en Río de Janeiro]

The Police action was supported by helicopters and armored vehiclesas well as a huge mechanical shovel, which the police had to use to remove the cement barricades set up by drug traffickers to make it difficult for cars to enter the favela.

The videos made by residents of the neighborhood and published on social networks show the intense shooting that they had to suffer in the neighborhood hidden in their homes and even in the darkness of the night.

Some of the videos denounce alleged police abuses and indiscriminate shootings by uniformed officers.

Reports of police violence in Brazil multiplied this week after an operation by the elite corps of the São Paulo Militarized Police left at least fourteen dead in Guarujá, a town on the São Paulo coast.

The deaths were recorded in the last four days and after a police officer was murdered by a drug gang in Guarujá.

Although the governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, defended the operation and denied abuses, different human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, have demanded independent and exhaustive investigations.