Deadliest police raid in Brazil kills 132, corpses line Rio street ahead of global climate events

The deadliest police operation in Brazil’s history killed at least 132 people, public defenders said on Wednesday, as Rio de Janeiro residents lined a street with dozens of corpses found overnight, a week ahead of global climate events in the city.

State police said the raids targeting a major drug gang the day before had been planned exhaustively for more than two months, designed to drive suspects into a forested hillside where a special operations unit was waiting in ambush.

“The elevated lethality of the operation was expected but not desired,” Victor Santos, head of security for Rio state, told a news conference. Rio police officials confirmed 119 deaths so far, including four police officers.

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Santos said there was no connection to global events Rio will host next week related to the United Nations COP30 climate summit, including the C40 global summit of mayors tackling climate change and British Prince William’s Earthshot Prize.

Rio has hosted several global events over the past decade, including the 2016 Olympics, the 2024 G20 summit and the BRICS summit in July, without violence on the scale seen on Tuesday.

The city’s most deadly police raid before Tuesday was a 2021 raid that left 28 people dead in the Jacarezinho neighborhood. In 1992, 111 were killed when Sao Paulo police stormed the Carandiru Penitentiary to put down a prison rebellion.

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Residents of the Penha neighborhood in Rio gathered dozens of corpses from the surrounding forest overnight 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,” said Taua Brito, a mother of one of those killed, surrounded by weeping mourners and onlookers on either side of the long row of bodies, some of which were covered with sheets or bags.

UN urges prompt investigation

Several civil society groups and public security experts criticized the heavy casualties of the military-style raid. The United Nations Human Rights office said it adds to a trend of extremely lethal police raids in Brazil’s marginalized communities.

“We remind authorities of their obligations under international human rights law, and urge prompt and effective investigations,” the agency said in a statement.

Rio Governor Claudio Castro said he was certain those killed in the operation were criminals firing guns from the forest.

“I don’t think anyone would be walking in the forest on the day of the conflict,” he told reporters, calling the raids an effort to combat “narcoterrorism.”

“The only real victims were the police officers,” he said.

The Rio state government said the operation was its largest ever to target the Comando Vermelho gang, which controls the drug trade in several favelas - poor and densely populated settlements woven through the city’s hilly oceanside terrain.

Police said they had arrested 113 suspects in the operation and seized 118 firearms.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was surprised to learn Rio police had launched an “extremely bloody, violent” operation without notifying or involving the federal government, Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski told journalists.

The minister said he planned to meet with Rio’s governor and could increase the number of federal security officials there.

Lula, who returned to Brasilia late on Tuesday from a trip to Malaysia, met with Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and cabinet members on Wednesday to discuss the matter, his office said.