Brazil’s president calls for investigation after 121 killed in police operation against gang: “There was a massacre”

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Tuesday that the police operation against a powerful criminal faction in Rio that left 121 dead was “a massacre.”

“There was a massacre, and I think it’s important to verify the conditions under which it occurred,” Lula said in the Amazon city of Belem during an interview with international news agencies, including AFP.

The police raid last week against the Red Command drug trafficking gang saw thousands of officers battle heavily armed men dressed in camouflage, who dropped explosives on police from drones.

“Drones dropping bombs is now a trend used by heavily armed criminal groups,” Carlos Solar from the Royal United Services Institute told BBC News.

Rafael Soares, a journalist covering crime in Rio, told BBC News Brasil last week that the Red Command had been on the offensive in Rio in recent years, reclaiming territory it had lost to its rivals, First Capital Command.

Police footage released by local media shows members of the gang gearing up for the fight, with dozens streaming into a forested area where they clashed with elite security forces, and where many of the bodies were found the next day. BBC News verified several videos showing dozens of bodies laid out in a row in a market area of Rio, in its northern Penha district.

The battle exposed Rio de Janeiro’s chronic security woes and divisions on how to tackle them.

While rights activists have denounced harrowing scenes of dead bodies lined up in the street, surveys showed many of the city’s crime-weary citizens supported the operation.

Felipe Curi, the head of Rio’s Civil Police force told reporters Friday that police had so far identified the bodies of 99 “criminals” among the dead — 42 of them subject to arrest warrants and 78 with extensive criminal records.

Amid criticism that his administration is too lenient on crime, Lula said on X Friday that he had submitted a bill to parliament proposing a minimum 30-year prison sentence for gang members.

A photographer who witnessed the aftermath of the operation told the BBC of how residents came back with mutilated bodies of those who had died.

The bodies “kept coming: 25, 30, 35, 40, 45…”, Bruno Itan told BBC Brasil. He said the bodies included those of police officers.

One of the bodies had been decapitated — others were “totally disfigured”, Itan said. Many also had what he says were stab wounds.