Three suspected drug dealers were killed in the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil on Wednesday. The number of encounters has reached 29 today since the tumult broke out last weekend.
The encounters were started when they started open fire on the police officials searching the slums for drugs in the northern part of the city. A police spokesman said that they were suspected of bringing down the police helicopter last weekend and hence these gangs were being searched in the slums.
- Gangs bring down police helicopter
Oderlei Santos a police official said that the Police operations are being conducted in every part of the city comprising of six million people, and that there was another gun battle between police and the gang members.
Thousands of police officers are being brought to Rio by the state authorities. They have been ordered to secure the area and search for drug traffickers and the gang members who brought down the helicopter in which three police officials were killed.
The people living in the slums where the helicopter crashed fled their homes. They said that they were fleeing because they heard some gang members of another slum were planning to enter the area. A slum dweller said “Everyone is afraid of going back to their homes, it’s better to stay on the street”.
Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has offered almost $60 million till now just to check down the violence and to help maintain security in the area.
Human rights division has condemned the strategy used by police since hundreds of innocents were killed in action.They said that several innocents were killed in the police raids and they claim that the killed were suspected criminals. The policemen carry out the raids with no investigation or warrants and bring down civilians with no charges.