132 killed in Rio police crackdown on gang

RIO DE JANEIRO:

The Rio de Janeiro public defender's office on Wednesday said a total of 132 people died in the bloodiest police raid against drug gangs in the Brazilian city's history, as grieving residents laid out dozens of bodies in the street.

"The most recent update is 132 dead," the Rio state public defender's office, which provides legal assistance to the poor, told AFP.

There was no immediate corroboration of the figure from other sources.

Rio state Governor Claudio Castro put the death toll from Tuesday's violence at around 60 but warned that the real figure was likely higher as more bodies were being to be taken to a morgue, where the dead were being counted.

Four police officers were slain during the military-style operation, which involved 2,500 officers taking on Rio's most powerful criminal organization, the Comando Vermelho, or Red Command.

In Penha Complex — one of two densely populated, working-class neighborhoods targeted in northern Rio — residents wept over a line of at least 50 corpses early Wednesday.

A woman screamed as she hunched over the body of one of the victims, who were laid out in a line, covered in make-shift shrouds, some stained with blood.

Two girls, their faces streaked with tears, gently caressed the face of a dead man, wrapped in a sheet with a floral motif, and then hugged each other tightly.

"The state came to massacre, it wasn't a (police) operation. They came directly to kill, to take lives," one woman, who did not wish to give her name, told AFP, as she touched the face of another victim.

Authorities said that "60 criminals" had been killed in fighting that unfolded during the drug raids in the Penha Complex and the Alemao Complex, located near Rio's international airport.