RIO DE JANEIRO • At least 25 people were killed in a shootout between suspected drug traffickers and police in Rio de Janeiro, during one of the deadliest raids in the Brazilian city, police said.

People targeted in the raid on Thursday in the poor Jacarezinho neighbourhood tried to escape across rooftops as police arrived in armoured vehicles and helicopters flew overhead, television images showed. The firefight forced residents to shelter in their homes.

The victims included one police officer. The others were suspected members of a drug-trafficking gang that dominated life in the slum, including some of its leaders, police said.

It was the deadliest single police operation in 16 years for Rio de Janeiro, which has suffered for decades from drug-related violence in its numerous favelas.

The bloodbath prompted criticism from human rights groups, including Amnesty International, which lambasted the police for the "reprehensible and unjustifiable" loss of life in a neighbourhood mostly populated by black and poor people.

"The number of people killed in this police operation is reprehensible, as is the fact that, once again, this massacre took place in a favela," said Dr Jurema Werneck, executive director of Amnesty International Brazil, referring to the informally organised neighbourhood with few public services.

A 2005 raid in the Baixada Fluminense in Rio's violent northern outskirts killed 29 people.

"This is one of the largest death tolls in a police operation in Rio, surpassing 19 at the Complexo do Alemao slum in 2007, except we did not lose one of ours then," police chief Ronaldo Oliveira said.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Rio de Janeiro prosecutors have a constitutional obligation to oversee the police and pursue criminal investigations into abuses by the force. It called for a thorough and independent investigation into the deaths.

According to HRW, Rio police killed 453 people, and at least four police officers died, in police actions during the first three months of the year, despite a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting operations in communities during the Covid-19 pandemic except in "absolutely exceptional cases".

According to the police, the gang also robbed trucks of cargo and held up commuter trains to steal from passengers.

Police displayed an arsenal of seized weapons at a news conference: six assault rifles, 15 handguns, a machine gun, 14 grenades and a round of artillery ammunition.

REUTERS