 "Relatives mourn over the bodies of people killed the day before during a police raid targeting the Comando Vermelho gang in the Complexo da Penha favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. AP")
Slaughter. Massacre.
Shock and horror are the two overriding emotions in Brazil as a police raid in Rio left at least 132 people dead , spotlighting the city’s controversial war against drug gangs entrenched in poor neighbourhoods.
Following the police operation, being dubbed the deadliest in Rio’s history, corpses were splayed out along the favela’s main drag on blue tarpaulins and black plastic sheets covering the street.
But what exactly happened? Why did a police raid turn into such carnage? We explain it all.
A pre-morning raid turns into war-like situation
On Tuesday (October 28), a force of 2,500 launched a pre-dawn assault on Alemão and Penha, the vast patchwork of favelas in Rio. Their target, as authorities say, was the “Red Command” gang.
The Comando Vermelho, or Red Command, is Brazil’s oldest criminal group, according to InSight Crime, a think tank studying organised crime. The group began in a Rio de Janeiro prison in the 1970s as a means of self-protection for prisoners, and was inspired by leftist guerrillas. In the years since its inception, Red Command has been stamping its control over Rio, battling with other militias to capture territory and cement its hold on the city.
In fact, by 2024, power had shifted in Red Command’s favour, according to an InSight Crime report. Moreover, an AP report added that the group controlled half of the municipalities in the Amazon region, up from one-fourth the year before.
Authorities said that 2,500 police and soldiers in helicopters, armoured vehicles and on foot, set out to capture the leaders of Red Command and limit its territorial expansion. Rio Governor Claudio Castro called the raid a part of the war against “narco-terrorism”. He further stated that the raid had been two months in the planning and was based on a thorough investigation.
However, as officials made their way into the favelas, the gang members drew gunfire causing scenes of chaos across the city. Schools in the affected areas were forced to shut down, a local university cancelled classes, and roads were blocked with burning buses used as barricades.
As the police and gang members exchanged fire, videos online showed the Red Command members targeting the police with drones. Rio de Janeiro’s state government shared a video on X of what appeared to show a drone firing a projectile from the sky.
Governor Castro even wrote on X, “This is how the Rio police are treated by criminals: with bombs dropped by drones. This is the scale of the challenge we face. This is not ordinary crime, but narco-terrorism.”
Residents share a different story
While authorities called the raid a battle against the Red Command gang, residents described it as “war-like”, with shoot-outs between officers and armed men and buses being on fire to create barricades.
Following the raid, the residents lined up their dead on the streets after recovering them from the forest nearby. One woman, identified as Raquel Tomas, said that her 19-year-old son had been decapitated by the authorities during the raid. “They slit my son’s throat, cut his neck, and hung the head from a tree like a trophy, she was quoted as telling AFP. “They executed my son without giving him a chance to defend himself. He was murdered.
“Everyone deserves a second chance. During an operation, police should do their job, arrest suspects, but not execute them,” Tomas added.
Erivelton Vidal Correia, the head of the local residents’ association also described harrowing scenes following the raid. “I’ve brought 53 (bodies) down myself … there must be another 12 or 15 up there in the bush.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, brother – not even in the Gaza Strip does this happen … I can’t bear to see any more corpses,” he told The Guardian with tears flowing down his face.
In fact, residents of the Penha neighbourhood in Rio gathered dozens of corpses from the surrounding forest and lined up more than 70 of the bodies in the middle of a main street.
“I just want to take my son out of here and bury him,” Taua Brito, a mother of one of those killed, told Reuters.
As bodies collected on the streets of Rio, the anger also began rising with many screaming ‘murderers’ and ‘genocide’.
One woman, Cida Santana, who lost her son said: “This was a slaughter, not an operation. They came here to kill.”
Flávia Pinheiro Fróes, a lawyer who had come to support the families of the dead, added, “In 30 years working [in the favelas] this is the greatest act of savagery, the biggest massacre I have seen.”
And other echoed similar sentiments. Resident and activist Raul Santiago. “There are people who have been executed, many of them shot in the back of the head, shot in the back. This cannot be considered public safety."
Outrage and protests after horrific raid
The deadly raid has prompted concern over its excessive use of force. Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva expressed his horror at the scale of fatalities and said that he was surprised that such an operation went ahead without prior knowledge of the federal government.
Meanwhile, Victor Santos, head of security for Rio state, said that “the elevated lethality of the operation was expected but not desired”. He also promised an investigation into any police misconduct.
Even UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern over the high death toll. “He stresses that the use of force in police operations must adhere to international human rights law and standards, and urges the authorities to undertake a prompt investigation,” Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Wednesday.
However, Castro insisted those slain in the operation were all criminals, claiming the clashes largely took place in a wooded area where civilians were unlikely to be. “I don’t think anyone would be walking in the forest on the day of the conflict,” he told reporters. “The only real victims were the police officers.”
The UN human rights organisation also raised concerns over the high number of reported fatalities and called for investigations. “We fully understand the challenges of having to deal with violent and well-organised groups such as Red Command,” said UN Human Rights Spokesperson Marta Hurtado said. But Brazil must “break this cycle of extreme brutality and ensure that law enforcement operations comply with international standards regarding the use of force,” she said, adding that the body was calling for full-fledged policing reform.
Roberto Uchôa, from the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety think-tank also added, “Killing more than 100 people like this won’t help decrease the Red Command’s expansion. The dead will soon be replaced.”
Brazil’s bloodied history of raids
Rio has seen its fair share of lethal police raids. In 1992, Brazil witnessed the Carandiru prison massacre in Sao Paulo. Over 100 inmates were killed when military police stormed in to stop a riot.
In March 2005, some 29 people were killed in Rio’s Baixada Fluminense region, while another 28 were killed in Jacarezinho raid. A year later, another 25 people were killed during the Vila Cruzeiro raid. Notably, the last two raids — Jacarezinho and Vila Cruzeiro — occurred under the same conservative governor, Claudio Castro.
In 2024, approximately 700 people died during police operations in Rio, a rate of almost two a day.
With inputs from agencies