Laura Gamba
October 29, 2025•Update: October 30, 2025
BOGOTA, Colombia
A police raid and ensuing clashes with a drug trafficking gang in Rio de Janeiro’s impoverished neighborhoods left at least 119 people dead, authorities said Wednesday.
It was one day after a large-scale operation drew complaints of excessive use of force.
The death toll, including 115 suspected criminals and four police officers, was higher than initially reported. Officials initially said 60 suspects were killed in the raid Tuesday, which involved 2,500 police and soldiers in the Penha and Complexo do Alemão favelas.
Felipe Curi, Rio’s state police secretary, said at a news conference that additional bodies were found in a wooded area where the suspects had been wearing camouflage while engaging security forces.
He added that residents removed clothing and equipment from the bodies.
“These individuals were in the woods, equipped with camouflage clothing, vests and weapons. Now, many of them were found in their underwear or shorts, without any gear, as if they had gone through a portal and changed clothes,” said Curi.
Rio’s state public defender’s office put the death toll at 132.
“The elevated lethality of the operation was expected but not desired,” said Victor Santos, Rio state’s head of security, at a news conference Wednesday.
Authorities wanted to "combat the territorial expansion" of the Comando Vermelho criminal group, which resisted security forces with heavy gunfire and grenades launched from drones. Law enforcement teams, traveling in 32 armored vehicles, entered the areas in the northern part of the city in the early morning hours.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski were “horrified” by the scale of the deaths and surprised that such a large operation had been carried out without the prior knowledge of the federal government.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed concern about the high number of deaths. “He emphasizes that the use of force in police operations must comply with international human rights law and standards, and urges authorities to carry out a prompt investigation,” Guterres’s spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said Wednesday.
Rio state Gov. Claudio Castro maintained that all those killed in the operation were criminals, and confrontations occurred mainly in a wooded area with little civilian presence.
“I don’t think anyone would be walking in the forest on the day of the conflict,” he told reporters. “The only true victims were the police officers.”
