The Rio de Janeiro public defender’s office on Wednesday (October 29, 2025) 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.

‘Executions’

But angry residents accused the police of summary killings.

“There are people who have been executed, many of them shot in the back of the head, shot in the back. This cannot be considered public safety,” said Raul Santiago, a 36-year-old resident and activist.

Lawyer Albino Pereira Neto, who represents three families that lost relatives, told AFP some of the bodies bore “burn marks” and that some of those killed had been tied up.

Some were “murdered in cold blood,” he said.

The huge number of police officers who took part in the operation were backed by armored vehicles, helicopters and drones, as the streets of the favelas saw war-like scenes.

The police and suspected gang members traded heavy gunfire. Fires erupted around the neighborhoods.

The authorities accused the suspects of using buses as barricades and of using drones to attack the police with explosives.

“This is not ordinary crime, but narcoterrorism,” Rio state governor Claudio Castro wrote Tuesday on X, where he shared a video from the fighting.

Police raids in Rio’s favelas, where drugs gangs have a powerful presence, are a common occurrence. However, Tuesday’s operation stood out for the scale and lethality.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said it was “horrified” and called for “swift investigations.”

A delegation from left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government will travel to Rio on Wednesday for an emergency meeting with Castro.

Last year, approximately 700 people died during police operations in Rio, almost two a day.

The Human Rights Commission of the Rio state legislature will demand “explanations” of how the favela was turned into a “theater of war and barbarism,” commission head Dani Monteiro told AFP on Tuesday.

Published – October 29, 2025 09:43 pm IST

Swiped off: Rubble of houses destroyed by landslips following heavy rains in Petropolis, Brazil, on March 23.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Rescuers in boats and aircraft raced against the clock on March 24 to help isolated people in Brazil’s mountainous southeast after storms and heavy rains killed at least 20 people.

With more rain predicted on March 24, the deluge pounded the States of Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo, where authorities described a chaotic situation due to flooding. The death toll rose there from four to 12 on Sunday as rescuers advanced.

The most affected municipality is Mimoso do Sul, a town of almost 25,000 inhabitants located in the south of Espirito Santo, where at least 10 people died in floods, though officials fear the toll may yet rise. State Governor Renato Casagrande described the situation as “chaotic,” saying that so far it has not been possible to assess the damage in some of the more isolated areas, with fears the toll could yet rise. Search teams rescued a girl buried for more than 16 hours in the city of Petropolis. Her father, who was found dead next to her on Saturday, had “heroically protected the girl with his body,” a neighbour said.

The deluge came as Brazil, South America’s largest country, suffers through a recent string of extreme weather events, which experts say are more likely to occur due to climate change.

Such tragedies “are intensifying with climate change,” President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a post on X, adding that thousands had been left homeless by the storm. He expressed sympathy for the victims, and said his government was working with state and local authorities to “protect, prevent and repair flood damage.”

Elite police walk through a bus terminal where police say a gunman wounded two people and took 17 others hostage aboard a bus, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on March 12, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Brazilian police said on March 12 they released 17 hostages from a gunman that took over a crowded bus in Rio de Janeiro and wounded at least two people.

Rio police said in its social media channels that all hostages aboard a bus parked at one of the city’s main terminals had been freed “after a successful work of negotiation” led by its elite squad.

The man’s motive remains unclear, Police Col. Marco Andrade said in an interview on TV news channel Globo News. “We have children and older people inside the bus,” Andrade said, adding that very little was known at this stage.

The bus was parked at the Sao Cristovao terminal in the city center and was scheduled to head to the neighboring state of Minas Gerais.

Police cars and ambulances could be seen waiting near the bus, while thousands of passengers were stranded waiting for information on scheduled travel.

People interviewed on TV said they heard several gunshots, causing panic inside the crowded terminal.

One wounded person was sent to a nearby hospital, police said.