AT least 64 people were killed and 81 arrested as 2,500 heavily armed police and soldiers stormed Rio de Janeiro’s favelas in the city’s largest-ever anti-gang operation.
Gun battles raged for hours on Tuesday across the Alemão and Penha complexes, the strongholds of the powerful Red Command (Comando Vermelho) gang.
The conflict has left “bodies strewn all over the streets,” according to a community leader quoted by O Globo.
Governor Cláudio Castro said the city was “at war,” calling it “the biggest operation in the history of Rio de Janeiro.”
Four police officers were among the dead, officials confirmed.
“This is no longer common crime, it’s narco-terrorism,” Castro said in a video on social media, hailing the seizure of dozens of rifles, drones and a “large quantity of drugs.”
The raid, reportedly planned for over a year, aimed to crush the Red Command’s territorial expansion.
The gang, Brazil’s oldest criminal faction, emerged from Rio’s prisons during the military dictatorship and now runs major drug and extortion networks across South America.
Footage showed armoured vehicles advancing through narrow alleys as gunfire echoed and thick black smoke rose from burning barricades.
Local media said gang members used drones to drop explosives on police.
Authorities said the operation sought to execute 250 arrest and search warrants, but the clashes brought much of northern Rio to a halt.
More than 40 schools were closed, bus routes were suspended and residents were urged to stay indoors.
“This is the magnitude of the challenge we face,” Castro said, adding that security forces would remain deployed “in the fight against crime.”
Human rights groups condemned the bloodshed.
The UN Human Rights Office said it was “horrified” by the violence, warning that it “furthers the trend of extreme lethal consequences of police operations in Brazil’s marginalised communities.”
César Muñoz of Human Rights Watch called the day’s events “a huge tragedy” and “a disaster.”
“The public prosecutor’s office must open its own investigations and clarify the circumstances of each death,” he said.
Residents described waking to heavy gunfire before dawn.
Glória Alves, 65, who lives in the Palmeiras area of Alemão, said: “There was this volley of shots — so, so many shots. It was horrible.”
Activists accused the government of turning Rio’s poor neighborhoods into war zones.
“This is not a public safety policy. It’s a policy of extermination,” said the Marielle Franco Institute.
Governor Castro’s administration has taken an increasingly hard line against organised crime, but critics say such raids fail to dismantle drug networks.
“What’s different about today’s operation is the magnitude of the victims. These are war numbers,” said public safety expert Luis Flávio Sapori.
The clashes came just days before Rio hosts the C40 World Mayors Summit and Prince William’s Earthshot Prize — global events linked to the upcoming COP30 climate summit in Brazil.
