RIO DE JANEIRO (BN24) — Residents of Rio de Janeiro’s Penha neighborhood lined a main street with dozens of corpses after Brazil’s deadliest police operation left at least 119 people dead, authorities confirmed Wednesday, triggering international condemnation and grief across the city.
The large-scale raid, which police said targeted the powerful Comando Vermelho drug gang, unfolded over several days and culminated in scenes of horror as families searched for loved ones among the dead. Witnesses described hearing gunfire echoing from the forested hillside where special forces ambushed fleeing suspects.
State security chief Victor Santos told reporters that the “elevated lethality of the operation was expected but not desired,” insisting the mission had been planned for over two months. Public defenders said the actual death toll may reach 132, making it Brazil’s most violent police action on record.
Officials said the raid was unrelated to upcoming global climate events in Rio, including meetings tied to the United Nations COP30 and the C40 Summit, which will host leaders such as Prince William.
Overnight, residents dragged dozens of bodies from the nearby forest, lining them across the asphalt under makeshift coverings of sheets and plastic bags. “I just want to take my son out of here and bury him,” said Taua Brito, a grieving mother who stood beside the body of her teenage son, surrounded by mourners and stunned onlookers.
By afternoon, hundreds joined a motorcycle caravan from Penha to the governor’s palace, waving Brazilian flags smeared with red palm prints — a haunting symbol of protest against state violence.
The death toll has already eclipsed the 2021 Jacarezinho raid, in which 28 people were killed, and the infamous 1992 Carandiru prison massacre in São Paulo, when police shot dead 111 inmates during a riot.
The United Nations Human Rights Office urged Brazil to conduct an immediate and impartial investigation, calling the operation part of a “disturbing pattern of extremely lethal police raids in marginalized communities.”
Relatives and human rights lawyers said many of the victims bore signs of torture and execution-style killings. “Several families reported bound limbs, knife wounds, and gunshots to the face and neck,” said attorney Guilherme Pimentel, who is assisting victims’ families at the Rio police morgue.
Rio Governor Claudio Castro defended the operation, claiming all those killed were “criminals firing guns from the forest.” He rejected allegations of abuse, calling the dead “narcoterrorists.”
“I don’t think anyone would be walking in the forest on the day of the conflict,” Castro said, insisting the only true victims were the four police officers killed.
Authorities said 113 suspects were arrested and 118 firearms seized, describing the operation as the largest in Rio’s history.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was reportedly caught off guard by the scale of the violence. Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski said the federal government had not been informed beforehand and would meet with state officials to discuss possible federal intervention.
Lula returned to Brasilia late Tuesday from a trip to Malaysia and convened an emergency meeting with Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and senior cabinet members to address the crisis, his office confirmed.
As Rio de Janeiro prepares to host international leaders for climate events next week, the massacre has cast a long shadow over Brazil’s security forces — raising new fears about impunity and the escalating militarization of policing in the country’s poorest neighborhoods.
