By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 3/23/2023 at 9:43 PM, updated 3/23/2023 at 9:43 PM
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Aerial view of the favelas of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, February 24, 2023. DOUGLAS MAGNO / AFP
At least 11 people were killed in a police operation in a favela near Rio de Janeiro on Thursday, March 23, including a leader of a drug trafficking gang from northern Brazil, local media reported.
The operation at the Salgueiro complex in Sao Gonçalo, a poor Rio suburb, aimed to apprehend “members of the Comando Vermelho from Para State (north) who had taken refuge there,” police said, confirming the Operation but not the number of 11 dead announced by the G1 site.
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code name “L41”
Police added that the operation was “still ongoing” at the end of the day. The Comando Vermelho is one of the main criminal organizations in Brazil and very active in drug trafficking. Para State Governor Helder Barbalho said on Twitter that “Leonardo Araujo, known by the codename ‘L41’, wanted by police, died in clashes with law enforcement.” “He was the chief leader of the largest criminal organization in Para and had directed several attacks in Rio,” he said.
That police operation targeted “those responsible for a series of attacks on Para public security officers,” as well as other gang leaders “involved in recent attacks in favelas in Rio’s West Zone,” where vehicles were torched on Wednesday became. said the police. Two women, aged 53 and 62, were injured in the gunfire, news site G1 said.
For his part, the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Claudio Castro, said on Twitter that “two criminal gang leaders have been arrested in the states of Sergipe (Northeast) and Para”. Castro therefore reported a second police operation, carried out on Thursday in the Maré complex in northern Rio, which made it possible to arrest the drug trafficking leader in Sergipe.