13 drug traffickers died in a shootout with police in Rio de Janeiro

Brazilian police on Friday slaughtered at least 13 suspected drug traffickers during a shootout in a favela in the bohemian Santa Teresa district of Rio de Janeiro.

The clash erupted when police were greeted by gunfire as they entered an area where the suspects were hiding, according to Colonel Mauro Fliess, a spokesman for the police. He added that no policeman had been injured.

Officers seized drugs, guns, guns and ammunition during the operation to combat drug trafficking. Police later announced Friday that the death toll had risen to 13 after the deaths of two hospital-injured suspects.

Rio de Janeiro is one of the most violent cities in the world, where gunfire is frequent between police and drug gangs. Its homicide rate is about 50 per 100,000 population per year.

On the photos captured by the Associated Press, one can see a desperate woman running in a narrow street, warning loudly that the police were preparing to "run" people inside a police station. next house, according to the photographer.

At one point, a bullet was heard in a house and soon after, two heavily armed police officers were seen in a van carrying two corpses wrapped in bloody sheets.

The new right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, has pledged in his campaign to fight growing crime and said that police who kill criminals should receive medals instead of lawsuits.

In December, the militant organization Human Rights Watch said in a report that the death toll from police reached a "record" in Rio.

"Military-type security operations that kill people in poor neighborhoods do not improve public safety," the statement said. "On the contrary, they make communities fearful of the police and less likely to collaborate with the police in the fight against crime."

"Although the Rio police sometimes kill people in self-defense, investigations by Human Rights Watch and other groups show that many killings are in fact extrajudicial executions," he added. .