Brazilian police take Rio gang stronghold
Baku, November 27 (AZERTAC). Military armored vehicles carried police into the heart of a gang stronghold, chasing gunmen into nearby shantytowns and setting the stage for what many people expect to be a bloody battle in Rio`s offensive to quell a surge of criminal violence.
Authorities didn`t say if police would immediately push into those slums, but said federal police were to join the operation later on Friday to help hold territory taken from the gangs.
At least 350 officers from Rio`s elite police unit and regular policemen were ferried to the top of the Vila Cruzeiro slum Thursday in armored vehicles on loan from the nation`s navy.
By mid-afternoon, live aerial television footage showed dozens of heavily armed gangsters fleeing from the slum into a jungle area and then calmly walking into the nearby Alemao complex of more than a dozen shantytowns.
Police have long called Alemao one of the two strongest areas being targeted in a two-year-old aggressive policing program that has seen officers enter 13 slums and push out drug gangs that had maintained absolute rule in the areas for decades. Security officials declined to say if they would enter Alemao later on Friday -- or if they would wait and invade the area sometime later within the next six months, as had earlier been planned.
Raids on gangs this week came in response to widespread violence that the criminals allegedly have inflicted since Sunday. More than 40 buses and cars have been burned on major roadways, motorists robbed en masse and police outposts shot up in the city that will host the final match of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.
At least 23 people have been killed in the clashes, most of them suspected drug gang members. Since late Sunday, authorities have arrested more than 150 people in raids on nearly 30 shantytowns in the northern and western parts of Rio. Brazil is trying to clean up the seaside city ahead of the World Cup and Olympics. Over the past two years, authorities have established permanent police posts in 13 slums as part of an effort to bring basic services to the communities and rid them of drug trafficking-related violence.
“We took from these people what has never before been taken -- their territory, their safe harbor,” Rio state Public Safety Director Jose Beltrame said. “It`s important to arrest them, but it`s more important to take their territory. If we don`t take their territory, we can`t advance.”
Officials said Thursday`s push into the Vila Cruzeiro shantytown killed at least eight people and left one police officer wounded. Police said they arrested 11 men and seized gallons of gasoline and sticks of dynamite.
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