At least 132 individuals lost their lives in what officials characterized as Brazil’s most extensive police operation against drug trafficking organizations, as reported on Wednesday. In Rio de Janeiro, locals gathered along a street where numerous bodies were retrieved overnight following the raids. The deceased men were arranged in a single line along the sidewalk of a square located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Residents indicated that many were left in their underwear to assist relatives in identifying them, while others were draped with bedsheets.
The sequence of events Brazil’s state police indicated that the raids, which aimed to dismantle a significant drug gang, had been meticulously planned over a two-month period and were designed to drive suspects into a forested hillside, where a special operations unit was strategically positioned to apprehend them. “The heightened lethality of the operation was anticipated but not sought after,” stated Victor Santos, the head of security for Rio state, during a news conference, as reported by Reuters. He further mentioned that authorities would look into any occurrences of police “misconduct.” Residents from Rio’s Penha neighborhood gathered numerous bodies from the adjacent forest overnight and arranged over 70 of them along the center of a main thoroughfare.
“More bodies kept arriving,” stated Rene Silva, a community leader from the area where the raids occurred, as reported by the New York Times. He estimated that volunteers retrieved between 50 and 60 bodies throughout the night. “Mothers, wives, and children were present, weeping,” Silva further remarked. There remained uncertainty regarding the manner in which the extensive operation transpired and whether civilians were among those who lost their lives. An official later admitted that the operation had failed to meet its primary objective of apprehending a prominent gang leader. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reportedly sent a ministerial committee to Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday and committed to providing federal assistance for the forensic investigation. “We cannot allow organized crime to continue to devastate families, oppress residents, and disseminate drugs and violence across the cities,” Lula expressed in a post on X. Rio state governor Cláudio Castro characterized the raids as a “success,” citing the arrests of 113 alleged members of the Red Command gang, in addition to the confiscation of 118 weapons and a significant quantity of drugs. Castro indicated that the operation aimed to diminish the Red Command’s increasing influence and to prevent the gang from extending its control over larger areas of the city. The recent raids represented the deadliest police operation in Brazil’s history. The previous record for the highest death toll was set in 2021, when 28 individuals were killed during a police anti-drug raid in Rio’s Jacarezinho neighborhood.
