Rio de Janeiro police in deadly raid; multiple deaths reported

RIO DE JANEIRO » Multiple deaths were reported during a police raid Thursday in Rio de Janeiro’s largest complex of favelas, or low-income communities, but the exact toll remained unclear hours later.

An officer and two other individuals were killed and a woman was injured, an early police statement said. The Rio-based newspaper O Globo, among other outlets, reported that the woman was pronounced dead after being taken to a nearby hospital.

Upon arriving just beyond the site of the operation, Associated Press reporters saw residents carrying about 10 bodies as bystanders shouted,

“We want peace!” Residents said that those who attempted to help the injured risked arrest. “It’s a massacre inside, which police are calling an operation,” one woman said in anonymity because she feared reprisals from authorities. “They’re not letting us help (victims),” she added, saying she saw one man arrested for attempting to do so.